Re: [GSAS-Member] Timers Gone Bad

[Erik Olson <erik@thekrib.com>]

On Sun, 29 Nov 2009, Shango Los wrote:

> I use regular vacation timers on my lights.  I get them for $8 at Ace 
> Hardware.  The downside with these is that they begin to make a churning 
> rotor noise at about a year.  I have three of them in my house all 
> chugchugchugin along.  I don't care for that sound.
>
> Do you use a similar quality?  Have you found something better?

Our house runs on X10, which costs around $10 per controlled 
switch/outlet/plug-in-thing, plus the controller units.  I've had to make 
some modifications on the plug-in-things to defeat the "local control" 
(which isn't real compatible with fluorescent lights), but otherwise, many 
of these have been running for 15+ years.  The other nice thing about X10 
is that it recovers from a power outage, and you can do things like 
stagger two sets of bulbs to turn on in sync with each other (like exactly 
1 hour apart).  The downside of X10 is that it uses the AC powerline as a 
transmission media, and that can be noisy.  Plugging in certain laptio 
computer power supplies can cause the system to malfunction.  There are 
other newer standards, such as Insteon, that work even better, but are 
more expensive.

   - Erik

-- 
Erik Olson                                                        Sent from my 
crusty old Linux box
erik at thekrib dot com
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