HouseBot

Hi,

Has anyone noticed the one-second delay that occurs between X10 commands?

I have some VBScript that sends a large number of X10 commands out to different X10 devices via a CM11 interface, to change whole house lighting scenes.

The script runs very quickly, and issues the commands using SetPropertyValue statements to change device properties such as "device.Power State" or "device.Leviton Dim", or "Generic X10 Controller.Composite Property".

However, the X10 commands take much longer than the script to actually "trickle" out of the CM11 interface. It appears that they are buffered and that there is a one second delay between each command appearing on the power line.

Is there a specific reason why this one second gap between X10 commands occurs? I know X10 is a low-bit-rate protocol, but this additional 1 second delay between commands causes extremely slow response times.

I'd appreciate any thoughts on whether this delay between commands is an X10 protocol requirement, and whether it is introduced by the CM11 hardware interface, or perhaps the CM11 driver software in Housebot itself.

If at all possible, I would like to investigate whether this delay can be reduced or eliminated in special circumstances, to help with speedier X10 communication of a large number of commands.

Thanks for your help!

Have you tried using the Active Home control software that comes with the CM11.
Whatever you do with the CM11, it will always be slow. I have expirimented with it for a long time (still using it b.t.w.), but never got any quicker results.

A command on X10 takes about 0.7 seconds. That is just the speed of the protocol. The CM11 is very slow to receive X10 commands from the power line. That ends up taking about 2 or 3 seconds.

Eric

Thanks guys for your replies. It seems there's not much to be done about the speed then, but I guess I can live with that!