X10 Homebuilt signal analyzer

X10 Home Built Line Protocol Analyzer - Monitor

I recently ran across a problem of unexpected activity of some X10 devices - turning on logging in my software package did not help since nothing out of the ordinary was being sent - I wanted to see actually what was on the line. Like most people that have been using X10 for a while I have a drawer of unused or out of date X10 modules that I cobbled together with some software and spreadsheets to make a X10 Line Protocol Analyzer.

Components:

1. An old laptop to run the software. (This is for a windows XP solution).
2. An old IBM Home Director CM11A Module
3. A copy of IBM Home Director Software (Similar to ActiveHome)
4. A SerialMon shareware application version 1.4 to generate logs.
5. An excel spreadsheet to analyze the logs. (I had to write it in formulae - complex but possible, should have written something in perl in retrospect).

Connections:

• The laptop had the IBM Home Director software installed - which caused a server process that monitors the serial port #1 to start up a boot.
• SerialMon shareware was installed.
• Laptop was rebooted.
• The CM11A was connected to the laptop port #1 and plugged into the wall outlet.
• SerialMon shareware was started and the preferences menu was used to set the "cable type" to #6 which is software "tap" on a live serial port.
• The serialMon software was set to record and also to drop logs of the traffic every hour.
• The logs were loaded into the spreadsheet and the traffic displayed.
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