FLIPIT(1)

NAME
flipit - control the X10 Firecracker (CM17A)

SYNOPSIS
 flipit [-h] [-t tty] [COMMAND ARGS] [COMMAND ARGS]...

DESCRIPTION
This document describes flipit version 0.3.6.

Flipit allows you to control X10 devices with your Unix computer by means of a Firecracker (model number CM17A) plugged into a serial port.

X10 is a method of transmitting control commands to devices over regular home power lines. The Firecracker is a device manufactured by X10 Ltd. See http://www.x10.com/ for product information.

For more information, see http://www.lickey.com/flipit/.

OPTIONS
First pass any options to flipit, then pass any commands. For a list of commands, see the COMMANDS section below. Now, for the options...

help
      -h

    Displays the usage message.

tty
      -t tty

    Set the tty flipit will use. This is usually set in the configuration file flipit.conf, but this option lets you override it, mainly for testing purposes.

COMMANDS
After any of the above options, you pass any number of commands on the command line. The commands are flip, dim and brighten.

Most of the commands take a "device-specifier" argument. This is just a way to specify a given X10 device with a string of characters. Device specifiers are comprised of a house code (a letter "a" to "p") and a device code (a number 1 to 16). E.g. a10

For concrete examples, see the EXAMPLES section.

brighten
      brighten device-specifier steps

    Brighten a device by a given number of steps. Steps can be from 1 to 6.

dim
      dim device-specifier steps

    Dim a device by a given number of steps. Steps can be from 1 to 6.

flip
      flip device-specifier on|off

    Flip a device on or off. The first argument is a device specifier (see above). The next argument is either "on" or "off."

ERRORS
If everything goes well, flipit will exit with a value of zero. Upon error, it will print the reason why on stderr and exit with a non-zero exit value.

EXAMPLES
The following will turn device 5 in house code B on:

"flipit flip b5 on"

The following will first turn device 10 in house code C off, then turn device 16 in house code A on:

"flipit flip c10 off flip a16 on"

The following will dim device a5 by 2 steps, then brighten device d7 by 4 steps.

"flipit dim a5 2 brighten d7 4"

FILES
flipit reads the filename of the tty device to use from the flipit.conf file. The flipit.conf file is usually in the /usr/local/etc directory, but can be changed at compile time.

NOTES
This is an ALPHA version of flipit. Not all features are implemented.

A similar and more full featured program is called BottleRocket.

BUGS
Flipit doesn't create any lock files when accessing the tty. There should at least be an option to do this for those using the cm17a on the same serial port as their modem or similar.

There are reports of the brighten command always taking the lamp to the full brightness. I haven't been able to reproduce that here. Some have suggested to me that this happens only with older lamp controllers. Any suggestions or fixes are appreciated.

RESTRICTIONS
Flipit does no security checking itself. If it finds that it can open the tty device named in flipit.conf it will be happy to do so.

AUTHOR
Matt Armstrong <matt@lickey.com> http://www.lickey.com/flipit/