A big part of having a system that provides some semblance of automation is using it to perform tasks that make life easier.  A definition of easy perhaps could be defined by a nice gentle way to wake up in the morning vs. the old fashioned alarm clock.  Our solution is to wake you with light, gradually increased every minute until it is bright enough to get you out of bed.  Since we sleep with a fan blowing in the room we also stop the fan and the programmable (not X10 yet) thermostat that turns up the heat.

All of these events happening around the same have the desired effect of waking us up at the correct time.  The future addition of an X10 controlled thermostat will help the single point control (for alarm time change purposes).

Each required event can be found in the links on the left of the page.

A recent addition is a hardwired light sensor in the master bedroom.  This allows the Ocelot to measure the light level so the controls are all in software.  When the light reaches a certain level the fan turns off.  There are two distinct level that actions are taken; one light level turns on the fan, the other turns off the fan.  We found early on that if there is not a separation between these two values that the fan would toggle on and off a little faster than what would be deemed acceptable.  The sensor is connected directly to an input on a SECU-16.   The input is left configured to read a digital contact closure but programmed in ECS as an analog input. 

Most of the concepts on how this works is covered by the Sunrise/Sunset page.