Hooking It Up

Plug the X10 CM11A into an outlet near your computer so that its interface cable is within reach of your computer. Because the CM11A uses a 9-pin serial connection, you will need a USB-to-serial adapter and the appropriate driver, similar to the illustration shown in Figure 23, The X10 CM11A interface controls the Web-Enabled Light Switch. If you use a Mac running OS version 10.6 or higher, you can download the PL-2303 driver from the Prolific website.[71] Computers running the latest Linux distributions should have no trouble identifying and connecting to the PL-2303 interface.

Next, plug the USB-to-serial adapter into a USB port on your computer and attach it to a powered CM11A interface. You’ll need to interrogate the device ...

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