[Noisebridge-discuss] hardware hacking: X-10 alarm system

travis+ml-noisebridge at subspacefield.org travis+ml-noisebridge at subspacefield.org
Fri Jun 11 02:03:31 UTC 2010


Hey all,

You know, I have a couple of those cheap X10 home alarm systems.

I wrote a little bit about X10 over a decade ago:

http://www.subspacefield.org/~travis/x10_talk.html

The problem with the alarm system, in my mind, is that it's too
limited.  You can only disable it with the cheesy and breakable
keyfob, and on an alarm condition, the response is fixed:

1) sound audible alarm
2) flash lights via normal wireline X10 commands
3) dial a number (7 or 11 digits I think)

I was thinking that if we could tap into the circuitry, we could
provide alternate ways to disable the alarm, and alternate things for
it to do when an alarm event is detected (e.g. email you, start
recording video from a webcam, generate a log message, or whatever).
There's a lot of possibilities here, and the cheapness of the X10
security equipment means it's highly accessible to the hobbyist.

The only problem is, I'm not a hardware wizard.  I can build basic
circuits (I read The Art of Electronics one summer), but I haven't
done computer interfacing beyond the nearly obsolete RS-232, and I
haven't ever tapped into circuit boards to repurpose them.

Would anyone else be interested in this?

I actually have a ton of ideas about a home security system... more
than I can go into here, as I've been thinking about it for 15 years
or so.
-- 
A Weapon of Mass Construction
My emails do not have attachments; it's a digital signature that your mail
program doesn't understand. | http://www.subspacefield.org/~travis/ 
If you are a spammer, please email john at subspacefield.org to get blacklisted.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 833 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://www.noisebridge.net/pipermail/noisebridge-discuss/attachments/20100610/a587db34/attachment-0002.sig>


More information about the Noisebridge-discuss mailing list