TheDailyInvention.com

I have created a web interface for the cm17a firecracker x-10 device. It runs on all windows OS’s, including XP. I really have to thank Scott Crevier for providing most of the code in his interface.

Originally I had a cm17a firecracker that I wanted to use to control some x-10 cameras and lighting over the internet for my other site FerretCam.org. I found some free options like misterhouse, but I couldn’t secure it and let anyone use it at the same time. in the end I decided to buy a cm11a device so I could use scott creviers program, but x-10 is notoriously out of date and the ActiveHome software that controls the cm11a is designed for windows 95! Scotts script accessed the com bridge of activehome which in turn directed the cm11a. But under XP the com bridge is unreliable, freezing every few minutes. I wasn’t going to downgrade my server to win95 thats for sure, so I started to look at other ways to send x-10 commands. I ended up finding a command line .exe to send the commands, and using scotts script as a base, wrote the perl script to access it.

The only problems I have with version 1.0 is that it takes a few seconds to execute the commands. If you can fix this issue let me know! I think it is based in the command line exe, but I don’t know anything about compiling exes.

Download v1.0
If you use/edit this script, all I ask is that you put a small, tiny, little link to www.ferretcam.org somewhere on the page.