[Noisebridge-discuss] X-10 hardware hacking

travis+ml-noisebridge at subspacefield.org travis+ml-noisebridge at subspacefield.org
Fri Jun 11 04:41:51 UTC 2010


On Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 10:00:06AM -0700, Jonathan Foote wrote:
> Have you busted open a unit to see what the wireless transceiver is?
> 
> Chances are high it's a cheap commodity chipset like Nordic or Zigbee.
> If so, you can sniff the serial commands to the transceiver with a
> scope and roll your own with a microcontroller.
> 
> I'd be interested in looking inside the box but reverse-engineering
> the protocol will likely be more labor-intensive.

I did open one.

There aren't any ICs near the antenna, just discrete components.  It's
kinda weird.  Maybe they figured out something so simple it didn't
require fancy logic - if you've seen the gray-code wheels on regular
X10 modules they use to select unit codes, you'll see that they're
masters of making something cheaper than you could imagine.

On similar lines:

http://www.baranharper.com/pdfs/x10/x10faq.htm

Q510 appears to have something similar, though inferior, to what I want.
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