Congratulations to Marie Potts November/December 1998 Contest Winner

1: Entry 102:July 27, 1998 my only child was paralyzed while playing Lacrosse in a Men's league in Delaware, he was 21 and turned 22 in September while in rehabilitation. Needless to say this catastrophic accident has changed our lives. Eric is a c-5/6 quad and will only have the use of his wrists and will be in a wheelchair. At the present time he does not have use of his hands or fingers and is concerned on how he will manage in our home with the different appliances. After being hospitalized and in rehab since July 27 he is scheduled to be discharged about one week before Christmas. Thanks to "ActiveHome" and X10 we will have installed appliances, TV, VCR, stero (which he can't live with out. Our Christmas tree which is usually set up in our living room will be in his room and when he enters his new handicap accessable room for the first time, the tree will light, his stero which will be playing Christmas music will turn on, and later the TV and lights will turn on all without his intervention. Then we will show him how it all works without him have the use of his hands.  Having the "ActiveHome" technology from X10 will make his holidays brighter, because this product will allow my son to be more independent. All of our Christmas have been joyous but this Christmas just for him to be able to be independent in our home is the best Christmas present I can ever receive and it is because of the "ActiveHome" product.--Marie Potts

2: Entry 173:The ActiveHome Recipe To Catch Santa Clause - Not To Mention, His Eight Reign Deer
1. Strategically place two X10 OUTDOOR MOTION MONITORS on the rooftop of your house. Make sure you position them for maximum rooftop coverage. Note: Remove flood light bulbs. You don't want to scare Santa away.
2. Hide one Hawkeye Motion Sensor in front of the fireplace. I recommend using double back adhesive tape to stick the sensor on a Christmas package.
3. Place one Hawkeye Motion Sensor in the kitchen opposite the refrigerator.
4. Place one Hawkeye Motion Sensor above the front door.
5. Place one Hawkeye Motion Sensor above the side or back door.
6. Get five X10 Remote Chimes (SC546) and label one ROOFTOP, one FIREPLACE, one REFRIGERATOR, etc.
7. Program each Remote Chime to correspond to the appropriately laid out sensor(s).
8. Place all the labeled chimes on your nightstand.
9. Keep your video camera on standby.
10. Duct tape a very large flashlight, preferably a 10,000-Watt, to a baseball cap.

The scenario will play out as follows:Santa and his sleigh land on your rooftop. The rooftop mounted X10 Outdoor Motion Monitors signal the appropriate chime on your nightstand. This gives you enough time to power up your video camera. The next chime that triggers will give Santa's location away. This gives you the opportunity to navigate to his position with camera in hand. Once you spot the man in red, let him have it with the flashlight that is positioned on your head. Won't your friends be amazed as they preview your video adventure that Christmas morning? They'll see Santa and his eight reign deer kick your ass up and down the block. They will also witness him taking back all your presents, as you lay in a bruised lump on your plastic outdoor nativity scene.--Sean Bumstead

Entry 809: I actually received ActiveHome from my sister for Christmas last year. Having just bought a new house    I wanted to go "all out" for Christmas this year. I use ActiveHome not only to control all my thousands of lights on my trees     bushes    doors    and house - but also to control when the Christmas music comes on the CD player    when it should turn the VCR on to tape my favorite holiday programs    and best of all to control my train set and holiday village under and around my tree!--Pamela     McAtee

3:Entry 249 Yeeeeha! My pets won't hate me this Christmas and inflict on me their usual vengeance for leaving them alone as I travel home for the holidays. Not with their new X10 ActiveHome system. These pets are the strangest and most baffling critters on the planet. As long as they think I'm home, they'll play hide-and-seek all day and night instead of eating my pillows, consorting with my furniture, and utilizing empty corners. I purchased the X10 ActiveHome Super Deal and it is going to keep my pets very busy indeed in my absense. By night, I've programmed 5 table lamps to consecutively turn on and off in a circular pattern throughout the house. By the time my pets have figured out that I'm not in the room, the light shuts off, and the next room is lit, reigniting their interest in finding me. By day, it's cartoons on TV in the morning, and in the afternoon, it's my pets' 10 favorite compact discs, PLUS, the fish tank light comes on! The dogs and the cats alike find the aquarium very soothing. Now I can travel in peace this holiday season knowing my pets aren't thrashing my home. Thank you, X10, for saving me money, unpleasant household odors, and personal belongings. You're amazing!--James White

Entry 310: This use of X10 is true. I have been doing this for over 10 years. Though I use an older X10 controller, I am going to redo this project using ActiveHome this Christmas.Mine is a large old 3 story home. I line the front windows (13 of them) on all three floors with clear Christmas lights and hook them to lamp controllers coded by floor (D1-3). I also line the front porch with two sets of lights, the vestibule, and the front door. These are set to 4 more codes (C1-4). Between the front windows I hang four 3'x4' sheet of foamcore poster board with the letters N-O-E-L spelled in christmas lights in red and green. The lights are simply poked through the board, spaced about an inch apart in the pattern of the letter with red and green strings alternating. Each string is assigned a code (A1-4, B1-4) by it's color and letter, so that, for instance, an "ALL ON" on for house A will cause NOEL to be displayed in red. Bushes in the yard are wrapped in lights on another controller, as is the Christmas tree.A program (in BASIC) excecutes a series of patterns on these lights that takes about 5 minutes to repeat. The house starts dark, the bushes light, then the porch-door series, then the windows light in ascending floors. The porch and bush lights dim and NOEL is spelled out in multiple colors left to right, right to left, dimming, flashing, rotating colors, etc. For instance, the sequence "A-all-on, B-all-on, A-all-off, B-all-off" will cause the NOEL to flash red, white, green, off. There are many patterns of lighting and dimming for the whole house.The display starts at sundown and stops at 11PM. The computer is on a controller too and it turns itself off. It is restarted the next night by an old BSR timer controller.While the whole display IS a bit garish, it generates much traffic and stopped cars in front of our house. It is certainly the most complex display I've ever seen on a home; in fact it probably has more control points than any commercial display I've seen. It's an easy project that lends itself to starting small and expanding every year or two, but by now I don't know what else to add. I hope someone else can use this idea too.--Gene James