KLH@nic.ddn.mil (Ken Harrenstien) (11/21/89)
More than one person has suggested the following:
43-177 Phone Flasher (switches up to 300 watts of 120VAC) $14.95
43-178 Phone Flasher II (has 120VAC strobe) $29.95
I appreciate the responses but I'm afraid I erred on the side of being
overly concise. My question was specifically worded "throughout the
house"... that is, in several rooms. I already have a couple of
flashers (telco-provided and otherwise) which do the same thing as the
above devices, but to accomplish the "throughout" would either require
running a modular cord to multiple devices, or multiple AC power cords
to each room.
Ugh. The popular X-10 home control system seems like a much more
elegant and flexible method of distributing the signal, which is why
I'm attracted to it -- but the Radio Shack catalog, at least, appears
to offer no off-the-shelf way to tie a ring detector into an X-10
controller. No light sensors (even for the "home security" aspect).
If any of the flasher devices used an all-purpose relay instead of an
resistive-only triac I could at least invent a Rube Goldberg
arrangement that repeatedly bashed at a controller button... :-)
KenKLH@nic.ddn.mil (Ken Harrenstien) (11/24/89)
> Oh, yeah, take your BSR alarm module set the switch to trigger on > contact closure. Wire the contacts together and plug it into the > 43-177. I'm guessing that there is enough time for the BSR signal to > get out before the ring pulse falls (closing the internal relay). If you know that the FF (43-177) is powered by telco current rather than house current, and consequently doesn't need to be plugged into 120VAC, that might work. Otherwise won't this method end up frying the unsuspecting alarm module? (btw, a complete X-10 message takes 183ms) > Otherwise a 110vac SPST relay will solve the problem, tie the coil > side to the 110ac output on the 43-177 and the NO (normally open) > contact side to the "trigger" connections on your BSR alarm module. Yeah, this was what I had been thinking of doing, if no other ideas came along. Unfortunately, it now looks as if the RS "Universal Interface", aka BSR "PowerFlash" burglar alarm, may not be useful after all. The instructions I dug from an opened box for the latter seem to imply that once triggered, things remain active until a reset button is manually pushed. In other words, if you forget to disconnect it before going out of the house, you could return to find that a random call had left the entire place blinking on and off all day (or week). Not so good. Unless I discover that the RS version has a modification to track the input signal instead of triggering on it, or an automatic reset timeout, it looks like the "technology store" is going to come up short. Ken
sewilco@datapg.mn.org (Scot E Wilcoxon) (11/24/89)
OK, how about this:
Get the Radio Shack Fone Flasher which flashes external lights.
Plug a 120 VAC to low voltage DC converter in as if it is a light.
Connect a resistor (limits current) in series with a relay to the DC.
Connect the relay contacts to an X-10 alarm contact module (if you
can't find one, get the newest DAK catalog).
Connect the desired lights to respond to the X-10 code generated by
the alarm module.
Any X-10 experts know if there's any problem with having a light module
listen for the alarm module signal?
The above has the advantage of mostly using off-the-shelf components which
are probably all UL-listed. Soldering is minimal.
Scot E. Wilcoxon sewilco@DataPg.MN.ORG {amdahl|hpda}!bungia!datapg!sewilco
Data Progress UNIX masts & rigging +1 612-825-2607 uunet!datapg!sewilco
I'm just reversing entropy while waiting for the Big Crunch.