Home Control

By controlling the now-obsolete CP290 computer X-10 device, this program lets users control X-10 appliances directly and through schedules. Download Program and Source Code This software was originally released in 1996, and an enhanced user interface, pictured in the screen shots on this page, was released in 1998. In 2011, the program and its source were released as open source software using the GPLv3 license. This program permits full use of the CP290's capabilities as it was written specifically for this device, though it did not implement a user interface for the CP290's "icon" memory, which was of dubious utility anyway. As far as I am aware, this program was the first Win32-based program to control the CP290 device as well as the only CP290 control program that implements non-destructive base unit house code changes. Because it was designed for the CP290, Home Control supports the control of multiple devices in the same house code simultaneously both in direct commands and in schedules, which was a rarity in CP290 control programs at the time, even though the device supports it. The architecture of Home Control splits the CP290 driver from the user interface, permitting other programs to use the DLL library to control the CP290. As far as I know, Home Control is the only front end that uses its CP290 library. This program was written during my junior year in high school for an honors physics class. I entered it into the Fort Worth Science Fair, where it won four awards. This made it eligible for entry in the Texas State Science Fair in Austin, Texas, where it was featured amongst many other innovative software projects at the time. Similar to the LPD processor for HP PCL that I wrote later, I wrote this software from the communications specifications that came with the CP290 device. Unfortunately, modern hardware products typically no longer ship with such documentation.