X10 and Home Telephone Systems

As you learned in Chapter 9, “Using X10 to Provide Security,” X10-based systems can be used to alert you to break-ins at your home. As this chapter shows, X10 can also be used as part of telephone-based remote control of your home.

X10 signaling can be used to control modules through house and unit codes via touch-tone telephones or to control modules as well as groups of modules and predefined macros and procedures through touch-tone and voice commands. However, X10 is not suitable for warning you of power failure or similar nonsecurity problems at home because it relies on AC power lines to carry information. Therefore, this chapter also deals with a popular self-contained family of devices for home monitoring, the Sensaphone 1100 series, which can be used along with X10-compatible telephone-based home control systems.