The idea of x10bot came about earlier this year when my home was burglarized and I began looking for solutions to home control and security. Prior to that day, my away lighting was cheap 24-hour timer switches and no I had security to speak of. My newfound goal became to create something that could integrate lighting control, security cameras and Internet access, all tied together with a fully extendable programming language.

My language of choice was TCL (Tool Command Language), a popular scripting language that was created from the ground up for the purpose of being integrated into other packages. It is also great as a “glue” to bind other packages together. With it, I was able to tie together a simple telnet server, event manager and x10 control library in short order. Even if you are not familiar with TCL, you can become quite proficient in it in a matter of a few hours.

The end result was a home automation system that could be controlled from a single script that can be as simple or complex as your personal needs dictate. x10bot is a standalone software package and other than a CM11A and Linux based computer, it does not require any other tools to monitor and control your x10 system.

To configure x10bot, you simply add code to /etc/x10bot.conf for each unit you want to control and what you want it to do. The following demonstrates a minimalist approach:

# x10bot config script
# latitude and longitude for Phoenix, AZ (for
# daytime, sunrise and sunset calculation)

  coordinates 33.4341667 -112.0080556

# Create aliases for the light and sensor

  alias G1 LivingRoomLight "Living room light"
  alias G2 BedroomoomLight "Bedroom light"
  alias G5 LivingRoomSensor "Living room motion sensor"

# Assign the code in LivingRoomSensorProc (below) to
# be executed whenever LivingRoomSensor is tripped

  bind LivingRoomSensor LivingRoomSensorProc

# Schedule weekday events

  schedule_weekday 5 10 "turn LivingRoomLight on"
  schedule_weekday 5 15 "turn BedroomLight on"
  schedule_weekday 6 10 "turn LivingRoomLight off\n turn BedroomLight off"

# user defined procedure that tells if I am at home or work.
# if it’s a weekday and between 6:00am and 3:30pm, I am at
# work so return 1, otherwise return 0

proc atwork { } {

  set now [clock seconds]
  set dayofweek [string trim [clock format $now -format "%w"]]
  if { (($dayofweek > 0) && ($dayofweek < 6)) } {
    set time [clock format $now -format "%k%M"]
    if { ($time >= 605) && ($time <= 1430) } {
      return 1
    }
  }
  return 0
}

# code assigned to the living room motion detector
# if it detects motion and it is not daytime, turn the living room
# light on. If I am at work, send me an email at work to let me
# know the motion sensor was tripped. Call DoWebCam to take a
# picture and upload to my private web server.

proc LivingRoomSensorProc { address command value } {
  if { ($command == "CMD_ON") } {
    if { ![daytime] } {
      turn LivingRoomLight on
    }
    if { [atwork] } {
      x10_sendmail "devnull@mywork.com" "Sensor Tripped" "$address tripped"
      DoWebcam
    }
  }
}

In this example, I have defined the procedure LivingRoomSensorProc that gets called whenever the living room motion detector is tripped. If it’s nighttime, the living room light gets turned on. During the weekdays, it turns on the living room light at 5:10am, the bedroom light on at 5:15, and then shuts them both off at 6:10am.

The above is a very simple example. In my own real implementation, I have even finer detail. The lights will not turn on in response to the motion detector between 10:00pm and 5:00am unless I specifically turn them on, plus each light also has a “sticky mode” so that if I specifically turn a light off or on with a remote pad, that lamp stops responding to the motion detector commands for a period of one hour. For security purposes, if any of the motion sensors are tripped while I am at work, it also sends me an email there, alerts me via Instant Messenger, sends an alert to my pager and begins uploading the appropriate web cam pictures to my private web server. Every couple of minutes it updates my private server with full status information.