EZHOME X10 software released by Jim Hines

[mech]

I finally tracked Jim Hines down,the author of EZHOME and EZCRON amiga X-10 home control software. He was kind enough to give me permission to release it.
Jim no longer supports it so please don't bother him .

The software uses the CM11A x-10 controller, these are still available and work with many common control modules.a quick google search will find the controllers.

I have submitted it to Aminet but it has not appeared yet,so i uploaded it here:

ezcron4.lha http://www.megafileupload.com/atvF/ezcron4.lha

ezcron4.readme http://www.megafileupload.com/atvG/ezcron4.readme

ezhome.lha http://www.megafileupload.com/atvI/ezhome.lha

ezhome.readme http://www.megafileupload.com/atvJ/ezhome.readme

If these links are expired, check Aminet

Here is a article about it from many years back:
https://web.archive.org/web/19990117...s/AmigaHA.html

If you have a need for the software or not, please download it and spread it so it can never be lost.

Thanks,
Mech

EDIT: The files have appeared on Aminet now.

[AlfaRomeo]

Thanks for spread the files

[daxb]

The article (from 1998?) is very interesting. Didn`t knew that home automation existed for Amiga. Seems to be possible to get complete control to nearly everything. Someone here using it or used it back in the days?

[prowler]

Originally Posted by daxb

The article (from 1998?) is very interesting. Didn`t knew that home automation existed for Amiga. Seems to be possible to get complete control to nearly everything. Someone here using it or used it back in the days?

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=78640

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=18557

[nogginthenog]

Maybe that school in the US was using it :-)

[daxb]

Thanks prowler but I didn`t saw something that related to this.

[prowler]

Those examples may not have been specific to the Amiga, but they show that software of this type was more common back in the day than we might suppose.

[tygre]

Hi all!

Sorry to revive this old (?) thread, but since I'm "stuck" at home, I finally build my CM11A<->Amiga cable and starting playing with EZHome, which is very cool

Cheers!

[HardStep]

Originally Posted by tygre

Hi all!

Sorry to revive this old (?) thread, but since I'm "stuck" at home, I finally build my CM11A<->Amiga cable and starting playing with EZHome, which is very cool

Cheers!

What kind of hardware do you need which is still available and what can you do with it?

[Daedalus]

Nice! I remember the X10 stuff being a relatively big deal back then. Too expensive for me as a schoolchild though so I went about building my own rudimentary version.

From what I remember, the messages themselves were simply serial commands, so pretty much any platform with an RS232 port could control it in some way, given enough idle coder time

[tygre]

Hi HardStep and Daedalus!

Originally Posted by HardStep

What kind of hardware do you need which is still available and what can you do with it?

You can use any X10 modules, I found a set on eBay for less than $50, including lamp modules (to control lamps) and appliance modules (like lamp but with higher amps).

With that you can "simply" control your house and even program (I haven't tried yet though) your appliance. I put "simply" in quotes because X10 commands go through the power line and interferences may create false commands or "suck" commands and you will need to find which appliance causes problem and then plug this one on a filter to "protect" your power line.

Pretty cool though
(And no radio waves...)

Cheers!

[Lexridge]

Originally Posted by tygre

Hi all!

Sorry to revive this old (?) thread, but since I'm "stuck" at home, I finally build my CM11A<->Amiga cable and starting playing with EZHome, which is very cool

Cheers!

Hi everyone. I was recently trying to get UAE running on my Fedora 33 machine using my old DHx backups from years ago and stumbled across this forum.

I am one of the original authors of EZHome/EZCron and so surprised and pleased to see that it is still being used. Wondering if anyone has actually done any updates on it since giving it away?

Jim

[tygre]

Hi Jim!

Wow, it's great to read from you, welcome back!

I haven't done any change, I use EZHome "as is", it works very well for me but I'll be happy to help! Especially, maybe adding the triggers/macros?

Cheers!

[Lexridge]

Originally Posted by tygre

Hi Jim!

Wow, it's great to read from you, welcome back!

I haven't done any change, I use EZHome "as is", it works very well for me but I'll be happy to help! Especially, maybe adding the triggers/macros?

Cheers!

Thank you, and I appreciate your enthusiasm but it would take me months to wrap my head around that code again. Besides, I am pretty sure heyu can be built on the AmigaOS these days and would probably be much better with newer device support, such as the firecracker and some of the newer lamp modules, which EZHome surely doesn't support. It would just need a simple GUI to go with it.

Another idea would be to use HA-Bridge, provided there is Java available for AmigaDOS, that of which I have no idea. OpenJDK would work just fine probably.

These days, my home automation is still using some of my original old X10 stuff. Amazing how well this old stuff was built! However it is now all ran from a couple of Raspberry Pi 4 computers and mixes Zigbee, Z-wave, X10, WiFi devices and HABridge, which also integrates Alexa. The integration that HABridge brings between old stuff (x10) and new is just awesome!


Jim

[tygre]

Hi Jim!

Totally agree that going with Heyu would be best but I never underestimate the amount of difficulties and work needed to (re)compile something for the Amiga I may give it a try in the coming weeks... time is scarce

Unfortunately, any Java program is a no-go because there is no JVM for Amiga, at least OS3, not sure for OS4.

Sounds like you've quite a nice setup at home I use X10, so cool to control them from my A4000D... No Alexa or others, don't need them and don't trust them... I have a RPI as a NAS.

Take care!

[Lexridge]

Originally Posted by tygre

Hi Jim!

Totally agree that going with Heyu would be best but I never underestimate the amount of difficulties and work needed to (re)compile something for the Amiga I may give it a try in the coming weeks... time is scarce

What is being used now as a standard C compiler on AOS? GCC?

Unfortunately, any Java program is a no-go because there is no JVM for Amiga, at least OS3, not sure for OS4.

Wow, that sucks!

Sounds like you've quite a nice setup at home I use X10, so cool to control them from my A4000D... No Alexa or others, don't need them and don't trust them... I have a RPI as a NAS.

I am using Home Assistant on one, and the formally known as Mozilla Gateway for the second. I am between migrating from Mozilla to HA. Easier said than done.


Regarding Alexa, it is too useful not to use...but I agree. Trust is not there. After several weeks of tcpdump monitoring, I have found no evidence, and I am not a cyber security professional by any means, that Echos are sending random sound data to Amazon. I spent months on this. I have six Echos, including Echo Auto. It is amazing to say, while driving up my driveway to say, "Evening lights on" and the house lights up. All is OSS.

https://www.bwssystems.com/ I have nothing whatsoever to do with this project.

[Lexridge]

So I recently traded up from UAE to FS-UAE which is truly incredible software. What an advancement over the original UAE. Check it out if you are curious. It is available for Windows, Linux and Mac.
https://fs-uae.net/