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A good source of info for home AV solutions can be found here: http://www.avsforum.com/

For materials, start here: http://www.hometech.com/techwire/index.html?gclid= CP6XwO6Bv4wCFRfOggodXwhGaQ

www.hometech.com

They have excellent tutorials; I'd start with the stuff on structured wiring. But go through all of the tutorials, and pay heed to their recommendations. For example, it used to be that they were recommending two coax connectors per new wall plate. Now they are recommending three. And they point out that, with some of the newer HDTV's, you may need much more complicated wiring than that in order to support all of the possibilities.

They also sell everything that you will need. But the key point here is that their free tutorials will give you ideas that you never dreamed of.

They are pretty nice folks, and they can often give you extremely good advice if you ask them nicely. They also claim to run Linux on their servers too. :)

My only relationship with them is as an extremely satisfied customer.

Try http://www.hometech.com/techwire/ht-rg6qb.jpg

An excellent book is "The Practice of System and Network Administration" by Thomas A. Limoncelli, Christine Hogan. (ISBN: 0201702711) It is theory not necessarily platform specific. It is focused at unix, but can be applied in a windoze environment. I wish I had read that book years ago. It really does a good job of summarizing all the best practices. It's all the things they don't teach in school. http://www.everythingsysadmin.com/aboutbook.html There are links to reviews there. The average customer review on amazon is 4.5/5.

As far as pulling cable and doing the physical grunt work..make sure you do structured wiring otherwise you end up with a rats nest of wire. Over plan everything. Don't forget the simple stuff, have a dedicated circuit or two for the server(s) and network equipment with adequate UPS protection. Make sure the room is adequately ventialated and physically secure. Make sure you have room to grow, so when you need more equipment you have room for it or can easily make room for it.

• http://www.iec.org/online/tutorials/scs/
• http://www.swhowto.com/ (Geared more a home, but for small office would be comparable)
• http://www.hometech.com/acrobat/structured.pdf
• http://electrical.bobvila.com/Article/540.html

See also Residential Controls' RS232 serial thermostat.

These guys put the control box down by the furnace itself, so instead of having to run wire to the display, you only have to run wire from your PC to the furnace. They fully document the text-based protocol too, so its easy to program for.

I have one of these and it works fine. Also, no web server means fewer security worries.

Post if anyone wants my Linux code snippets.

When I build my own home (in a couple of years, I hope), I'll install this to all rooms. Instead of pulling a bunch of different cable, why not do 2XCat5, 2X Coax, and a fiber pair? This stuff is kind of expensive, ($1/foot at Home Depot) but when you consider what's contained in a single jacket, it makes sense. I would probably run extra service to the living room to accommodate the extra AV and computer gear, but a single run of this cable to each room is probably enough for most people.

Honestly, I'm surprised nobody else has suggested this yet. I get a woody every time I see this stuff.

He said DirecTivo. That means for DirecTV.

Satellite does not work like regular antenna/cable TV. You can't just put a cheap splitter in and expect it to work. The closest thing is a multiswitch which takes two (or 3 for DirecTV-HD) lines from the dish and spreads them out to the recievers. The details are too complicated to get in to right now, but google for info on multiswitches and you'll have more than you ever needed to know.

You can start here.

The project was born out of a total and absolute frustration which in turn was a result of a fruitless search of information about existing temperature zoning solutions. The only information available on the zoning system manufacturer web sites was usually "call us for an estimate". The estimates were usually being performed by salespeople. Technical people were difficult to get. Read the complete story for details.

The author obviously didn't look in the right places. Here are a few links to get started:

SmartHome
HomeTech Solutions
Bass Burglar Alarms

I've done business with all three, and have retrofitted my home with a two-zone system powered by an RCS zone controller and electronic dampers. All three have been extremely helpful in providing technical advice.

One thing to remember: The HVAC business (as well as the burglar alarm business) are very protective of their turf. You stand little chance of finding an HVAC contractor willing to work with you on designing a custom HVAC system.

DVB-S (Digital Satelite) will work with as many decoders as you have LNBs on your satelite dish.

That's how it was in the old days, but now we have multiswitches.

The reason one needs two LNBs to attach two receivers is that there are two "polarizations" of the satellite signal. The receiver sends a message to the LNB to change the polarization. Thus, receiver A can use LNB A to watch a channel with right-hand polarization, and receiver B uses LNB B to watch a channel with left-hand polarization.

What if you want to add a third box? There's not a third kind of polarization. You just need a way for the box to share the LNBs. That's what the multiswtich does.

Essentially, the multiswitch looks like a virtual LNB to the receiver. It keeps one of the real LNBs on right-hand polarization, the other on left-hand, and switches its outputs between them as needed to satisfy requests from the receivers.

Things get more interesting when you have an oval dish with a third LNB for satellites in a different orbital slot, of course.

There's a good basic explanation at the HomeTech site.

I remember having to wire something up when the power went out (no, not network cabling, more mundane stuff). Well, when the soldering iron got too cold to work anymore (no, I didn't have a battery powered one -- they weren't decent in those days), you start stripping the cables as usual, twist them, wrap them in solder, and use a match to secure the connection. A temporary hack, to be sure, but it worked for as long as it had to.

I will say, that if you plan to do a lot of this, (and "a lot" can be "as little" as retrofitting structured wiring in a house"), get the proper tools: a Greenlee punch down tool for jacks and headend (usually comes with either a 66 or 110 blade -- you want the 110 but it's worth paying the US$15 or so for the other) at about US$45, a hand crimper for RJ45/RJ11/RJ14 (usually comes with a bunch of plugs) at about US$20, a coax wire stripper with RG6 and R59 settings at under US$10, and a decent RG6/RG59 coax crimper: around US$20. Surprisingly. Home Depot has all this stuff, including plugs, structured wallplates and jacks, Cat5e cable, etc. (Having the coax stuff is, less surprising). BTW, crimping cables, particularly RG6 coax connectors is hard on the hands -- do get a good tool.

I retrofitted structured wiring to a house I bought a year ago. (You don't want to do this: putzing around in the attic, drilling through non-load bearing top-plates is double plus not fun -- I hired a guy who had network experience and did residential "cable" and "phone" cabling, but only had him help tie-wrap and pull cable -- it was stilla lot of work and definately a two-person job.)

I pulled two Cat5e ant two RG6 cables to six drops, plus an attic "subdistribution area" (existing cable and telco drops terminated up there) from a headend which received the DSL line, POTS, dual LNBs pointed at two satellites, and a terrestrial SD/HD/analog TV antenna in the attic. There are breakout panels in the headend. So, that's 14 Cat5e jack terminations (headend side is punched down to 110 blocks), and 28 coax terminations, just for primary cabling. Then there's end-cables to crimp, terminating satellite lead-in (8 more coax connectors: one each end of four cables), satellite cross-connect cables (8 more!), and break-out panel to multiswitch cables (yet another 8). 7 cables (14 more coax connectors!) go from the multiswitch to the coax breakout panels. 7 Cat5E jumpers (14 RJ45 crimps) run from the firewall/router to the Cat5e breakout panel, and 7 punched down jacks on that panel to the 110 blocks. There are some odds and ends (line power inserters for the attic-located terrestrial antenna amp) as well. Oh, and if you do this, you will be making jack extention cables (two coax, two Cat5e, around 100 feet long), with four coax and four Cat5e crimps, for testing back to the headend when you suspect the cabling to a jack.

The bottom line is that if you wire, retrofit structured wiring in a home, you will crimp and punch down so much, by the time you're done, you will be an expert. One upside is that you will almost never buy pre-made cables again: you'll just make your own, to length, as required. Oh, and if you run two cables, do get two spools, or you will go crazy running a cable, going back, running another, and so on. Yes, this means you will have two spools of leftover. Save it to make patch cables.

In my case, I bought 2000 feet of Cat5e and 2000 feet of RG6 (the guys at Home Depot thought I was nuts, and BTW, RG6 on the spool gets heavy fast), and ended up using around 1500 feet of each in a 3200 square foot house. I got headend enclosures, patch panels, a multiswitch, diplexers, and misc. stuff from Home Tech and satellite gear from American Satellite.

So you have to add glass breakage detectors - which is already four times the effort of a single infrared motion detector. One of the best looking - best performing passive infrared detector is the sharpshooter from Sentrol It is built on an asic and incorporates years of professional experience.

The beauty of the PIR is that it is highly effective with minimal false alarms. The sun moving across the sky, casting a hot spot on an interior wall for example may trigger a camera system, as may the a/c system moving a curtain. A good pir - properly placed in an outside corner looking in is very trustworthy.

If you want easy - ITI makes the best wireless system - now in their third design iteration of asic based transmitters - they have far surpassed the garage door opener days of wireless. Professional over the counter system

ITI Home

One problem with PC based security is battery life. Many burglars either shut off the power or take advantage of power outages to improve vulnerability. Professional systems can run several days without power.

The weakest link in most security systems though isn't the detectors or the batteries - it's the phone line. The salesmen learns quickly to ignore this point because the solutions are expensive, and once raised - their isn't much point to paying 30 buck a month for monitoring when a simple screwdriver can unhook the telephone. In most places the phone company insists on placing the connection outside, where they and anyone else can easily get to it when you're not at home.

The Siren is completely useless - worn thin by the mass production of car alarms with their characteristic sequence of pseudo police siren sounds. You can forget anyone caring about your house until about two hours later when it finally makes them angry enough to want your head shrunk and placed on a pole.

Cellphone connections are expensive - as are radio systems in most places. People have tried direct connections, but if the wire gets broken - too aften they just send the repairmen out to fix it - so what's the gain? Constant IP monitoring would generate the same kind of false positives everytime At&t cable internet goes down - every police car in town would be dispatched to check on "suspicious loss of service".

Thus you need a staged warning system with an off-site mayday server. Put infrared detectors outside especially on the side of the house with the service connections - connect them to lights and enjoy the benefit of a house that welcomes you. In Addition, have the system send a mayday signal to the server whenever activity is detected around the house. Maintain this connection until either the house is entered and the system turned off - or the connection is cut - thus triggering a genuinly suspicious disconnection. In this case - the mayday server calls you - then the cops - your mother-in-law etc . . .

Bottom line - and the reason i left the business - the most effective part of the system is the stickers on the window. The technology is mostly smoke and mirrors.

AIK

How about this stuff

A lot more expensive than plain cat5 though.

so what? I got a camera, refrigerator, my den lamps, and a blender hooked up on My X-10 at home! They have a camera, psshhh!