Greetings and welcome to an LGR follow-up episode of sorts. This will be a continuation
of both my episode on the X10 system, an LGR Oddware episode, as well as LGR Thrifts Episode
39 where I picked up this lovely little thing right here: the BSR System X10 “The Timer.”
And this looked like a pretty standard clock radio when I first saw it but then I realized
it was an X10 device and was instantly intrigued. Both because of the woodgrain and I just think
the X10 systems are fascinating. And then I saw that it has all of this right here.
This is not a radio — it is a clock though, as well as a control system for your X10 devices.
Now in my Oddware episode I showed how you could control these devices through software
in MS-DOS and Windows 95, and there were all sorts of ways to do it. And some of them were
more hardware-oriented, no software required. But I did think that it would be a little
fascinating to see how this works in conjunction with the software and the computer interface
— which is this right here. Again, I'd refer you to my LGR Oddware episode where I talked
about the history of this, what it can do, and all the functionality of the MS-DOS and
Windows 9x versions of this thing. I think it's super fascinating but the gist of it
is that these are devices that allow you to control lights and appliances and all sorts
of devices around your house through these interfaces. And it goes through your power
lines in your house — just the wiring that you already have, no need to really do much
setup at all, really. Yeah, this device in particular is what we're going to be checking
out today: The Timer™ by BSR. It seems there were a whole lot of these made by different
companies and in different iterations over the years. Some of them were much more modern
than this, some were older. And some didn't have this clock display, some have a different
kind of display. But either way the thing that they all have in common is this interface
right here and the ability to program your X10 system without having to go over to the
wall, your control box, or whatever. You can just put this beside your bed and control
and program your devices that way. So yeah, smart home of the 1980s, pretty friggin sweet.
As to what all of this stuff does here on the control interface of The Timer it's pretty
straightforward if you're familiar with the X10 system, but we'll just go over it really
quickly. So you have this switch right here which where you start, and you kind of see
these instructions there, as well as a place to label your different units. Let me go ahead
and plug this in so we can see what we're doing.
[plunk] Okay, so yeah first thing to
do here is set the time of day and you can set it at either fast or slow ways of configuring
here and these little buttons. And we'll just get it up to the current time, which is 1:40
PM. Okay, the time of day is set and then at this point you can program it to do various
things around your house. A little tough to switch. But yeah, so you can do your unit
code right here, so this would be the first lamp and this lamp it's on over here is actually
plugged into an X10 device. So let's just see if it works. Unit code number one, which
is what the lamp is set as, our house code is over here. My house is "A" so I'm not hooked
up to anything else, no other houses, no apartments. And then we can either turn the unit on or
off. It's on right now so let's switch it off and hit "all lights" or "now." Which I
just hit now, which means it's going to turn the light off right now or on now. There you
go. So yeah. That's how that works. And you can control it directly like that or we can
turn all the lights on. Which is turning everything on but I only have the one hooked up right
now. So that's how to do that. And since it's on unit code one still we can change some
of these things. So if we want the light to come on every single day at... 2:43 PM. We
could set that and click this. Or you can do the "once" button and that's going to do
just the one time. So say you have to wake up in the morning and you want the lights
to come on just the one time. There you go. Security mode is kind of interesting, that
actually enables the timer to come up with its own time based on what you give it and
it'll vary it every single day. So say you're away for a week. It's gonna turn on the lights
on and off at slightly different times of around the same time of day to sort of make
it look like there's somebody home and it's not a timer doing exactly on the dot every
single time the lights come on. And then the sleep mode, uh. I don’t know what that does
[chuckles] Oh hey it’s future LGR here while I’m editing this video. Turns out the sleep
mode, that works a lot like the sleep option seen on so many TVs back then. So if you enable
that you can set a timer and it'll turn off your lights after that runs out and you've
presumably fallen asleep, no need to alter your other daily lighting routines. And yeah
back to me because there’s more stuff to see, aw yee.
The only other option we haven't talked about is this right here, which just makes the light
the display dimmer, which is kind of nice if you're in a dark room. Oh yeah, it also
has a battery over here, I thought that was kind of neat. There's a tray there we can
put four double A batteries in and then it's just going to make sure that it keeps your
settings even if their power goes out. Let's go ahead and test this thing out with t X10
Powerhouse computer hardware and we'll see what that does because I'm curious if there's
any conflicts. And I'm going to be using this lovely IBM Personal Computer AT here with
MS-DOS and the X10 software loaded from our Oddware episode a while back. The x10 Powerhouse
computer interface is hooked up over there via serial, that is plugged into the wall,
this is plugged into the wall, this is plugged into the wall. Everything's plugged into the
wall. And then of course the lamp is plugged into an X10 Powerhouse lamp module which interfaces
through everything else through the wiring in my house. And now let's go ahead and get started.
[PC whirring to life, disk and hard drive noises dominating the soundscape]
The time is a little off on my computer I wonder if that'll make a difference if I set the
timer here and -- I don't know! [typity type type] All right here well it looks like we
can just set the time on here as well. I'm gonna set this to the same as this clock down
here. Neat. So this is the X10 Powerhouse interface, the 1986 version for DOS. And we
can control the light through the computer interface as well. There we go, and that made
that do its thing. We've got the dimmer if we want to do the dimmer. Yeerrrerrroump.
Our light is now dim. I mean that -- it's kind of redundant to use both the program
and The Timer because the program is doing all the stuff that The Timer could do just
through software. So that's why I'm kind of curious if it will conflict or if it'll just
work together and whichever one comes second will do its thing. I'm assuming it'll just
work together just fine, I don't see why not. So let me go ahead and set a timer over here.
So I'm gonna tell it to have this light turn off at 1:59. [click, clunk] And I'm gonna
do the same thing on here, I don't know we'll just see which one does first maybe or will
set the dimmer. I'll set the dimmer at 60%, today, at 1:59. All right, well we'll see
if that does that because this one is a little bit faster than this one is set at the moment.
See that just now turned to 1:58, that was already there. Okay! So that just turned off
the light from the clock's point of view over here. We'll see if this turns the light back
on with the dimmer at 1:59 when the computer reaches it. All right it passed 1:59 and it
did not turn the light back on and dim, which it really does just work in a first come first
-- Wait, what? Well, it just took a while. Ah-hah! All right. Not sure what the delay
was for but yeah as I was gonna say! It seems to just work on very basic logic, like first
come, first serve. That makes sense, all of these X10 devices were designed to be compatible
with each other and communicate, they just send out like one signal at a time. But I
was simply curious as to whether or not the software and the hardware would have any kind
of conflict at all, and apparently not! It’s such a simple and really kind of elegant solution,
these X10 systems. And the way it all works together, back then with all kinds of hardware.
And now, you can still get X10 stuff and it still all works and communicates. Maybe I
shouldn’t be so impressed but I can’t help it, I am amused. So yeah, that's pretty
much it for this little thing. Just a simpler video today because, I don't know, I figured
why not? As soon as I saw the The Timer at Goodwill, I just had to have it. Not only
was it woodgrain-clad but it was an X10 device that does X10 device things and I just like
these. And I hope that you enjoyed watching me mess around with this stuff. And if you
did like this then I very much recommend my Powerhouse X10 Oddware episode that is much
more involved as far as showing what all of these kind of devices came with, more of what
they could do, a voice-controlled interface called HAL. It's just a lot of fun I think
so check that out if you were Intrigued by what you saw here. And as always thank you
very much for watching!