What cable do I need?

[jjggag]

I need a usb to ttl cable. I need RX, TX, GND and the most important: a pin to control ZERO CROSSING, since my purpose is to

connect a pc through usb to XM10e (ttl-cmos) and so be able to send X10 commands through europe wire system.

What cable do I need?
Thank you so much for your help, since as you see, I'm bit noob

[mrhappy]

I am not sure the first intention is to use the XM10E is to connect it to a PC, whilst it does look like you can connect it I am not sure if you can connect it directly with just a cable. You are going to have to build one I think with a TTL converter and perhaps use one of the signal (DTS/RTS etc) lines to control the zero crossing.

Is there a reason you want to use the XM10E rather than something like the CM11/XTB232/TI223 which is designed for direct connection?

[jjggag]

Actually I want to use XM10e just because I already own it, since before this, I use it with an arduino, but now I'd like to connect it directly to the computer.

And moreover, I cannot find CM11 in any shop, is it obsolete?

Anyway, you think I could use the RTS pin, for Zero crossing?
Cause for example I found this on ebay: link and it has RTS pin, but I wasnt sure if it is what I need.

On the other hand, if I could find CM11 , is there any open library to manage it?

Thank you a lot.

[JeffVolp]

I have designed a lot of PC-controlled automation equipment. Back in the DOS era it was possible to control time-critical events. That is much more difficult running under Windows because of the many background processes that are stealing snippets of CPU time. While it may be feasible, I would not attempt to directly interface a PC to the TW523 X10 protocol. The timing is just too tight.

Jeff

[skybolt]

jjggag, you over looked one thing here. USB is a differential signal (much like one side of a 10baseT signal) and cannot be directly converted to an RS-232 signal. Not to mention you need a driver of sorts to talk to the USB port directly. You could however use a USB to DB9 RS232 adapter and then use a serial cable to the device. That should work just fine without any modifications.

http://pinouts.ru/Slots/USB_pinout.shtml

[mfisher]

If you want to use your XM10e then you already have the best solution in hand: XM10e - Arduino - PC. There is not a way to directly interface the XM10e to a PC because they "speak" completely different languages (both hardware and software) and you can not reliably do the "translation" in software on the PC - especially on a Windows machine. That is why many X10 powerline to RS232 (or USB) devices already exist.

There are many X10 based PC interfaces available that are Euro-compatible (240V/50hz) - ACT has a 240v version of their Ti103 (Ti213?) and Jeff Volp sells a 240v version of his X10 interface. There are also several others that a quick search of the board will turn up.

[Pete]

I've sent over the UK plug version of the 240 V ACT and Jeff Volp's 240 V devices last December (?) to a fellow HS peer.

UK HS user is using / testing both of these.