I want to apologize for dropping off the Earth for a few weeks now after all of the oustanding help several contributors gave, which I will name some and thank all I may have missed.
On the Version 1 Design that the got to work perfectly on my bread board my deep thanks goes to Jim Thomas for his great design that worked pefectly and to John Fields that Helped Sanity Check it and provided additional tips for me to consider as well as Bob Larter.
On the PCB Design Dave P really shined and was the layout I had planned to go with, it was an work of art, same for Shahram. On the PSB side while one member I will let go unanmmed told me to learn Chinese, I want to thank Pave P again, Shahram Dashti, Petrus bitbyter, and Eeore.
At the end I have perfectly working design and before I could even respond several people did PCB layouts for me including the files needed to send to a PCB maker.
The support I got here remindmed me of the old days where people really did pitch in and help, I see that is alive and well which makes the apology even harder in the sense that I feel bad that a last minute turn of events happened and what to be clear that this takes nothing from those that contributed.
In fact, if anyone feels "cheated" since I did offer to pay and in one case did compensate a key person to a charity as requested by him, please send me an email and I will come up with something.
Two things happened just as I was about to nail down the final details to get the PCB made for the great design Jim provided as well as all of his advice and support.
I got an email out of the blue from someone who was obviously following the two threads, the what I needed in a circuit and then the help for a PCB.
He came up with an alternate design, layed it out, built the PCB's (4 of them) populated them with parts except the relays, and mailed them to me. There were a few emails exchanged by frankly I thought he might just be pulling my chain but not to be rude I provided him with the details he asked for, which was not much since he had followed all of the posts on the forum.
I tested his design and it worked perfectly, was built except me adding the relays and then integrating it with the remote and putting in the alarm system.
I would name him but since he did not post I have to assume he does not want to be named in the open forum so will respect that and not.
Here are the links to the overall project, his design, the PCB, the relay control wired to the X-10 remote, and the overall project I was trying to get done.
- Block Diagram of the project: formatting link
- Sequence Timing Diagram: formatting link
- His Design Schematic: formatting link(Note: After hitting this link you may need to go to the URL Line and hit enter against the same address to get it to show up, not sure why, but it does come up then.
- The Trace Side of the PCB's he made himself: formatting link
- The Component Side of the PCB he made, with all parts but the relays: formatting link
6 The Relay Contral PCB Wired to the X-10 Remote Control PCB:
While I had already paid for the first design that worked, this was an end-to-en wrap except me putting in my alarm system, I will post the stages of that later, it really made no sense at that point to send off the orgiginal design PCB's to be made, sice I had 4 complete working versions.
Right after that I ended up on a work related trip to Europe and only recently returned, so that is why I vanished.
The fact that someone came out of the blue and did the end-to-end job takes nothing away from all the great help I got from those named above nor anyone I may have missed listing, I only wish he had got to me first so the rest of you did not put time and effort in to it but honestly, I never expected to essentially just have 4 complete boards show up ready to go and the new design has a substantial reduction in parts that makes it more probable that my X-10 frinds can just wire them on a perf board instead of me having to get PCB's made for them.
I really loved the first design, in fact it is still sitting on my breadboard working but I hope you see why I went the final path I did and again and very sorry I did not get back to the group ASAP.
Thank you all, Bob