X10 Home Automation and Home Security Frequency Asked Questions
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| X10 Basics | |
| X10 is a communications language that allows compatible products to talk to each other using the existing electrical wiring in the home. Most X10 compatible products are very affordable and the fact that they talk over existing wires in your home means that no costly rewiring is necessary. Installation is simple, a transmitter plugs (or wires) in at one location in the home and sends its control signal (on, off, dim, bright, etc.) to a receiver which plugs (or wires) into another location in the home. | |
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110V Electrical Wires
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X10 is Simple Press a Button on the Transmitter and the Signal is Sent over the Home’s Electrical Wiring to a Receiver Using simple dials or buttons you assign each product with one of up to 256 addresses. If you wish two products to go on and off together you can set them to the same address or use scene addresses on many advanced products. All X10 compatible products can be freely mixed and matched – so use can use some of these products together with X10, Leviton, Stanley, IBM, JDS, ACT, Homepro, etc. |
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| 5 Easy Steps to Install Plug-In X10 Products |
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| X10 – Making it Trouble-Free | ||
| Most of the time, X10 products work without any problems. However, because X10 products talk over your home’s electrical wires they may have difficulties in two situations. The first is when there is an appliance running that generates “noise” onto the powerline. Appliances that may cause problems are motors (e.g. dryer, treadmill, vacuum cleaner, etc.) and advanced electronics (e.g. switching power supplies on some laptops, some big screen TV’s, etc.). The good news is that all you need to do is plug the appliance into a noise filter such as FilterLinc.
The second “issue” with X10 is when your X10 transmitter is on one “side” (phase) of your home’s electrical wiring and the receiver is on the other “side”. Many times the signal either bridges the two phases at the transformer at the street or via some 220V appliance in the home. When this doesn’t happen, a simple plug-in phase coupler called Smarthome SignaLinc will solve this challenge.
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 FilterLinc Noise Filter  Phase Coupler |
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| X10 — Advantages | |
| It is estimated that X10 compatible products can be found in over 10 million American homes. This is because it has so many advantages over other types of remote control products and systems:
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| AAAremotes.com X10 Icons | |
In the X10 section and on the product pages you will find these handy icons to help you quickly understand what each product does. |
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These transmitters send a specially coded low-voltage signal that is super-imposed over the 120 volts on the home’s electrical wires. A transmitter is usually capable of sending up to 256 different addresses on the AC line. Multiple transmitters can send signals to the same module. |
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Devices with this symbol receive the special signals sent by the transmitters. Once a matching signal comes in, the device responds and turns ON or OFF or dims or brightens. Receivers generally have “code dials” that are adjusted by the user to set the address. Multiple devices with the same address can co-exist in the same home. |
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These devices both send and receive X10 signals. Like regular receivers and transmitters, they can communicate on all 256 addresses. 2-Way products are helpful for status reporting and triggering other receivers to turn on, off or even run a macro event (a multi-step event run by an intelligent controller). |
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These products add the convenience of a radio frequency link (e.g. signals which travel through the air) to X10 products. Popular products in this class include wireless hand-held remote controls and wireless motion detectors. A plug-in unit with an antenna is required to catch the radio signal from the wireless unit and puts the X10 signal onto the line (just like a garage door remote activates the opener). |
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| Example Products by Type |
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