1. Entry 11: While there are many wonderful practical uses for ActiveHome, it could also be the source of some great entertainment. Remember the movie Home Alone? Just imagine ActiveHome alone. The little kid could defeat the bad guys in style from his home computer! What power! What fun! - Judy McCurdy (06061911)Votes for June: 638

2. Entry 87:  It is 4 a.m. and from the other side of the house my grand-parents begin their morning ritual. You can hear the gripes and complaints as they shuffle around the "mother-in-law" apartment. My grandma shouts "While you’re up, you old bag of bones, get me a drink of water." My grandpa yells back "What did you say?" "Turn on your hearing aid" she yells. Adjusting the small dial, he replies again, "What do you want?" "The same thing I ask every night - a glass of water!" she answers.  As grandpa shuffles out of the room the X10 ActiveHome Motion Sensor activates a ActiveHome macro that turns the lights on from their room to bathroom and the kitchen. The heat strips in the floor and the bathroom have energized, again by an ActiveHome module, warming the tile floor, preventing a cold. Grandpa finishes his raid of my daughter’s cookies, followed by a glass of milk. He pours grandma a glass of water, takes a whiff of the fresh bread baking in the breadmaker, also initiated by an ActiveHome module, and shuffles back to the apartment. ActiveHome is now beginning the morning startup of the house. The coach lights by the mail box are brightened so the paper carrier finds the box. The pool pumps and heater power up so the water is the perfect condition and temperature before I begin my morning laps. As I rise, an X10 ActiveHome macro turns on the patio and pool lights as the coffee maker begins making a pot of coffee. I have rested well knowing that my grand-parents have found their way in the night without me worrying about them tripping or falling. I wake up with a warm house, warm pool and dry paper to read with that first cup of coffee. Now if ActiveHome could only figure a way to get my daughter dressed and out the door in time…  Thanks X10 for helping to macromize my life! - Janet Burns Votes for June: 413

3.  Entry 86:  I use the ActiveHome kit for security and for fun. when I go on vacation I let ActiveHome take over my home. It make it look like there is someone in my house. It is great! With the motion sensor active home knows when it is night and when it is day. At night it turns on the entrance light and turns it off in the morning. It also lets me know when someone comes to the door. No need for a doorbell it turns on and off lights to let me know someone is there. I also use this system for my convenience... I can turn all of the lights in my house with the push of a button. It saves time and energy. This system has been a lot of fun for me and my family. I would recommend it to everyone!!!! - Ryan Schroeder Votes for June: 251

4. Entry 74:  Pop a CD into the CD player -- music starts pouring out of the speakers. At the same instant the overhead lights turn off, and several colorful dance lights light up the room. As the song plays, psychedelic lights flash on and off, in perfect rhythm to the music. I've used the X10 CM11A computer interface along with some custom software and many lamp and appliance modules to create a `virtual DJ`. Dance light sequences can be easily programmed into the software for each track of any CD. Upon placing a CD in the CD drive of the computer for which sequences have already been programmed, the CD begins playing and the lights begin flashing in the sequence they were programmed to. To make sure the lights turn on/off exactly when they were programmed to, the software takes into account the time it takes for the signals to go from the computer to the X10 lamp and appliance modules. I currently have a strobe light, two traffic-style rotating lights,! a rotating mirror ball, a multi-colored rotating light, flashing Christmas lights, a red mood-light, a laser light show, and the overhead room lights hooked into the system. I can't wait to have some great parties with this!  - Justin SchumacherVotes for June: 112

5. Entry 39:  Put dinner into oven before leaving house in the morning. Set alarm to house and go to work. Once at work I remember I forgot to shut off the coffee maker - call the house x10 transponder and shut the coffee maker off for safety. That afternoon it didn`t rain as forecasted... I call the house x10 transponder to turn the sprinkler system on to water the grass- of course it's set to shut off through Active Home after 2 hours so there's no need to call back to shut it off. Well, it's time to leave work and go home... I call house to signal x10 telephone transponder - activate oven to cook dinner I put in this morning, and turn air conditioner on. Pull into driveway, outside lights, hallway, and living room light come on. Enter cool house, remove dinner from oven and eat. Put dishes in dish washer, enter den triggering motion sensor which starts stereo and turns on jacuzzi. Use jacuzzi while listening to stereo - finish - enter bedroom which triggers motion sensor which activates macro which turns on bedroom lights, shuts off Jacuzzi, starts dish washer, shuts off outside lights, and turns on alarm system. Read... relax... and enjoy the rest of the evening. - David Golden (06091149)Votes so far: 98

6. Entry 16: I`m on a team developing a Space Operations Center Simulator for training the operators of one of the most powerful deep-space radar facilities in the world. You can read about my unit, and our mission at: http://www.eglin.af.mil/20spss/site_c6.htm The tasks were training include much more than just the spacetrack mission. Our operators also serve as the local command and control function for the unit, and must be trained to respond to a vast range of stimuli including Fire Alarms, weather events, accident/injury reports, and equipment and power failures. We're using X10 technology to provide many of these stimuli.  X10 Technology has been integrated into our facility for everything from simulated fire alarms and duress alarms, to simulated power and equipment failures. We have an X10 controlled emergency light that comes on during power failure simulations, just like it would in the real facility. We even have the capability to simulate a bomb detonation by playing an explosion .WAV file through our PA system, while simultaneously flickering and dimming the lights via X10. It`s one of our best "special effects"! The simulators computer hardware consists of 12 computers on a LAN, and a host of other equipment. Before we got our X10 system, it was a very complicated task to bring it all online in a controlled manner, and in the right order. Thanks to X10, ANYONE can bring it online, as the whole procedure has been built into a single ActiveHome Macro which we activate from a wall switch. The ActiveHome System has allowed us to provide full computer-based control of nearly every electrical device in the simulator. We're still developing the custom software that will drive the simulator, but when complete, X10 "events" will be fully integrated into our simulation scripts, and we'll be able to schedule any event or group of events to occur automatically, in concert with simulated satellite tracking on our computers. In short, the X10 system has put us over the top for realism. It has provided us with a very low-cost means to give our simulator a fully-immersive feel. Instead of telling a trainee "You see the lights go out.", we we actually turn them out (and automatically). Instead of saying "You hear a fire alarm." we sound a horn and flash a strobe via a 24v transformer and two X10 Universal Modules. I know of at least two people who were so impressed with the technology after seeing it in action in our simulator, they installed X10 in their homes! - Jeff Werner (06061114) Votes so far: 64