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Electronic Gadget Ideas for a New House?
pmadden asks: "I'll be building a house this summer (standard straw bale construction, earth plaster, the whole low-tech gig). Naturally, I'll be putting gobs of ethernet in the walls, with drops to the rooms, on the roof, and so on. I'll add wireless too, once it's secure enough to keep all of you out. What gadgets should I plan for, so that I don't have to do a major retrofit? I'll have cables for TPZ cameras, for when they get super-cheap. We'll leave niches for putting in routers and stuff like that. What else? What cool thing will be cheap in a couple of years, leading my wife to ask, 'why didn't you plan for that'? Any recommendations for good Christmas light control systems, and so on?"
This is a placeholder, i will be referencing this when the dupe is posted.
I was bombing around the motorola website the otherday and they now have home automation equipment that ties into your tv... could be worth looking at.
"A learning experience is one of those things that says, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.'" - DNA
which is controlled by your Server and an Alarm is going off,when its empty. No,i am serious about that!
You can make pizza damn quick in one of those and throw parties and stuff! Plus you can impress your S.O. with your leet cooking skillz.
question: why are you building your house out of straw?
My sig can beat up your sig.
Better still, just tell her that you're happy for her to have fun with her friends... and you can watch!
Wouldn't straw bale walls block wireless signals worse than normal walls? They are thick and are stuffed with organic material wrapped with chicken wire. This sounds like a recipe for bad reception...
Have two air ducts availiable where your comptuer will be. Then you can pipe the hot air from a rear fan and PSU outside. Even better, you could also attach ducts to the front for ice-cold computing during the night or winter.
Put TV jacks in every room except bathrooms. I mean it, every room. You never know when the location of your TV will change.
Le français vous intéresse?
my uncle was just in town recently and had the plans to the house he is building. they are putting sockets under the roof overhangs just for christmas lights and they will all go to one or two switches. on one hand it seems silly, but on another it makes a world of sense.
as for everythng else maybe you want to try to keep some conduit space open for the future. honestly who knows what we will be using for TV or internet in even just a few years. will everyone have fibre in the house? will coax be gone? will CAT5 cable be old? is today's CAT5 cable going to be good enough for tomorrow's speeds? i don't know how much it matters in a house setup, but cable is rated for speed.
you might as well plan for ethernet everywhere. wireless is easy, but ethernet is cheap to do from the start. if you put something along the lines of an Audrey http://audreyhacking.com/ in the kitchen, it would be nice to have the wires ready to go.
How about leaving an empty conduit so you can snake additional cabling (Gigabit Ethernet, Fibre, etc) for future expansion. Everything leads down to a central location in the basement so that you set that up as the location where the server, TV (cable or satellite), telephone are centrally located.
Panic now, beat the rush!
what you need to get yourself is everything managable form everywhere. x10 will be nice to electronicly controll your house! lights, alarm system, tv, sterio the whole thing. your server should be able to turn on some lights whenever you accessed it remotely from the bahama's (or probebly from your mothers when your flat broke after building it) http://www.traxsoft.com/emp/tc/myhouse.htm
Firefox. It'll huff and puff until you're in a whole world of hurt.
As soon as the mice has eaten enough holes in the walls, that is.
Then I'll huff and I'll puff till.....
Best regards
Dilbert's Ultimate House might be a good place to start.
You'll have a lot more luck searching for a good camera with pan, tilt, and zoom capabilities if you look for "PTZ camera" (164,000 results) instead of TPZ camera" (2,330 results).
Steven N. Severinghaus
Instead of worrying about stuffing in every kind of cable you can think of it might be better to work on conduits. If you have nice wide, easily strung conduit lines all over the place you don't need to worry about choosing things or the march of technology.
Also, the chicken wire in straw-bale construction screams "Faraday Cage." Forget wireless.
Only in a Slashdot fantasy can a Slackware install turn into several hours of sex . . . . .
As far as my suggestion, I say you should account for the possibility of having a small server room in your house. Such a room would should be easy to keep cool (basement?), fire resistant, and have some type of shielding from electromagnetic radiation (like thin sheet metal).
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
The foundation is made of sand.
If you are at all interested in weather, think about putting in a wireless sensor package outside the house. I would look into the Davis Vantage Pro2. The university that I work at has the original Pro and I am thinking about getting one myself. It works like a charm: current weather, trends, 48hr forecasts, and graphs all on the base station. Plus, there is great software available for free on Linux called meteo that will populate a MySQL table with live data. Good stuff to then display using PHP and a web server.
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
Although you're not looking for the house design, I think you could get some ideas from the Dilbert house: click here
I would suggest putting lots of extra cabling in the walls. Even if you are not using the cabling it is much easier have it already in the wall instead of trying to run it again after the walls are already up. That means putting extra speaker/telephone/ethernet cabling everywhere, you never know what or where you might want to put something.
If you are worried about using wireless within the house and are not concered with using it outside you could look into using this paint as your base coat to protect the signal from leaking outside. Then you don't have to worrry about someone cracking into your network.
Defend Air Radio Shield
I do not know the condition of the power system in your area. Are there alot of brownouts/blackouts spikes etc... Up untill recently I have had pretty bad luck with power so I would suggest look into putting in a central power conditioning system to protect all of those electronic goodies and if you are insane like I am and think your personal server needs five 9's for uptime you should look into a UPS system for your server(s) and possibly your network. Remember with Bush in the white house for another 3 years our environment is going to go to hell in a handbasket so even if your power situation is ok now it may not be if we start having frequent adverse weather.
Check out Control4.
They came to our LUG this week to do a presentation. Really cool stuff they've got going. It all runs Linux, pretty hackable, etc. Control your lights, multiple audio feeds all over the house, and plenty more.
I was pretty impressed with it all.
Well, since you are apparently building your house out of hay (???) you might want to put some degree of anti-fire measures. Maybe install square tiles around the electrical outlets, and keep plastic underneath surge protectors.
It would be cool to buy a few tablet PC's and install them into the wall like control panels, and then hook a house wide sound system up to them, allowing you to listen to MP3's throughout your house, and change songs wherever you are. Plus, control panels are cool looking.
Then whatever happens you can just pull the wires through the walls. :)
:)
And you can paint the walls with that wireless blocking paint that will keep most of us "out".
There's a sale on tin foil hats to keep your brainwaves from leaking out too.
You could put in:
1. Motion sensor controlled lighting (keeps track of when people are in rooms, turn off when no one is)
2. Individually climate controlled rooms
3. Solar power panels or shingles to power your house
4. A "Roomba Room" (tm) in the center of your house. It has an access to each room that a roomba can fit through, and they just go in, clean their room, then retreat to the Roomba Room so they aren't noticeable)
5. Computer-controlled trap doors (to go with your cameras). You hide in your main computer room, and when the RIAA/MPAA bust down your door to take their files back and bust your a$$, you take them out with trap doors that drop them into rooms filled with tessla coils that make short work of them.
6. Oops, forgot the Heavily Fortified Central Computer Room (tm), complete with tinfoil hat shielding and RFID de-activator, teleporter, and personal harem. How can any geek live without this?
7. Built in plasma screens covering every inch of your walls, all controlled by various computers in your control room. You can change their displays or have them in tv mode, for the ultimate in mood lighting. Never paint again!
8. Teleporter bays (may as well be prepared for when they do come!)
I think that's enough, just use your imagination, buddy! The possibilities are endless.
Some interesting ideas would be the following. Some of these products can be found at smarthome.com
Electric deadbolts. You could eventually link these puppies up to your computer and allow remote locking/unlocking of your house, possibly even remove the need of a key and use thumbprint identification instead.
Be sure to put some ethernet ports near your major appliances. Some future appliances are planning to have network integration to let you know when they need to be fixed or require attention. Best Buy already sells a fridge with a wireless internet tablet.
I'd also suggest putting fiber in at your important locations of data transfer. Your main office workstation, media center, etc. Also run wire for a 7.1 surround sound system, and if you want to add even more convience consider possibly installing a house wide audio system so you can pump music into each of your rooms.
Also, you should possibly consider investing in VoIP. Rather than having to put in another jack for telephone, you could run everything through your ethernet.
Consider your house's surroundings. You could install automated irrigation systems, lighting control, and as well as proximity gate/garage openers.
Be sure to invest into a good security system to make sure no one steals everything you just put your money into. A good low-tech solution would be owning a dog.
Keep in mind though, if you do plan to make an entirely large technologically saavy house, you should also install some house wide precautions. You should invest in a serious housewide surge protector/power conditioners. Perhaps even consider getting some sort of backup power supply incase of emergencies. In which case, you should also isolate your power outlets for critical systems that should run off the backup as well so you won't be wasting backup power on non-critical devices during power outages. Also take into account power saving devices, efficiency is good. Consider flourscent and low wattage lighting. Well setup HVAC systems will monitor your house's environment well and know how to properly adjust.
Supply your in-ground sprinkler system with liquid propane and wire it to motion detectors.
And please put it on a webcam so we can watch.
Your focus on gadgets is misplaced. You don't know what will come along. Instead focus on infrastructure. This means tv jacks in nearly every room, Gigabit ethernet in every room (maybe more than one per room), possibly fiber, and more. As for wireless, this can be added if and when you want if you already have the infrastructure in place. Also you may want to have a second set of infrastructure so you can use digital entertainment systems to send out digital content to any room in your house.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Might I reccomend running DMX cabling for indoor/outdoor light control? It's easy enough to get switchbox sized controllers that'll allow you to switch between light presets, plus, you could always install dimmers. ~Nick
If IY was a PC:
/bin/sh: command not found
[InuYasha]~$ sit
You should put in hinged baseboards along your room to allow the changing up of cables for whatever comes down the pipe. It'd also making plumbing, electrical work super easy..
The first thing i would be designing for a new house for myself would be a second power grid, either as a 12 volt grid running from a battery backup in the attic/basement, or simply alternate outlets in each room that run from a generator or power inverter from the car. either way my main concern would be to have a wiring scheme in place in the event of power failure where i can still run a few lights and essentials in any room without having to power the entire house and appliances off the main grid.
I can tell you are going to regret the straw. Standard construction (sheetrock, brick)has less R Value, but you are putting yourself in a risky position using straw. There is just no way to anticipate what you are going to need 20 years from now - or even 10. I would at least listen to those who are suggesting lots of empty conduits. You make someday be facing a big bad wolf. Let the huffing and puffing analogies begin.
"What cool thing will be cheap in a couple of years, leading my wife to ask, 'why didn't you plan for that'? "
woah woah woah.. hold the horse.
You have a wife that ACTUALLY wants you spend money on gadgets??!?!
where do i find one of those?
Consider Solar Hot water and Radiant heat.
If your utility charges US$.17/KWH or
more (PG&E customers with 2 * baseline
in Silicon Valley) consider solar electric
right away, otherwise put in the 600V
DC wires from the roof to the electric
meter for when the costs come down
enough to make it attractive.
Pull in fiber during construction, even if it stays dark for a couple years. You never know when fiber could become a viable option for the home. Double up on your CAT5, even if you don't terminate it. You can always terminate it later, into whatever configuration you need at the time.
Like another poster said, every room, and I _would_ include the master bath plus plan for CAT5 for external surveillance and entertaining. Plan for speakers in the bathroom. News or music while you're getting ready for work...nice. Plan for more than one wall per room to be wired, it's a lot nicer NOT to have cables strung out around the room. Pull into a wiring closet to patch everything. Plan for speaker arrangment in the living/media room!!
In short, given the fact that wireless will never be as secure as wired, give yourself plenty of options when it comes to configuration. IMHO, wireless is to retrofit situations that the cable plants doesn't support.
I'd spend more time concentrating in efficiently heating and or cooling your house.
If you live someplace with cold winters...
Lots of well insulated south facing windows with eaves that overhang just the right amount so the windows are mostly in the shade from the eaves in the summer when the Sun is overheard but catch tons of sun in the winter when the Sun is lower on the horizon.
Then put remote controlled motors on the curtains so that they automaticly open and close for optimal heat in the winter(all closed at night and open to the east in the morning to the south midday and to the west in the afternoon) and for optimal light and minimal heat in the summer(close the curtains on the east windows in the morning and the west windows in the afternoon when the sun is shining in them, and then open them for light when the Sun isn't shining on them.
If the house is well insulated and you don't open the front door(or have a small entryway with two doors, to much you wont need much heat during the day in the winter. If you want to sink more money in to it you could probably bank some heat in water tanks or such and use them to keep the house warmer at night too.
Passive solar aside, do plenty of research and find a very good digital thermostat and efficient heating, air conditioning system. You also want to be able to program it so it automaticly minimizes energy consumption during times you are always out of the house(at work or school), or in bed, and warms up the house just before you get up or cools it down just before you get home from work in the summer.
@de_machina
A stove that calls your house when you are cooking something for a certain amount of time, I'm always in a completely different part of the house and sometimes I forget. Give me a call, my loyal oven!
[cx]
Don't network your house like this - you're just making it more vulnerable to an attack by the Cylons!
[All Your Fish Are Belong To Us]
When planning your house for the future, you need to have one corner in one room of the house designed to have _no_ electronic hookups at all. If possible, you should also make it into a wireless dead-spot. That way, when your future child (heck, even those might be electronic gadgets by then) needs some discipline, you can send them to the corner for an experience of life in the 20th century (also known as "back when I was your age"). On second thought, you should have as many as you plan on having children...
On a serious note, though... have you given thought to having one room without any hookups other than electric outlets? I have one room at my house that is my "escape" room. I don't have anything other than the room lights and a desk light in the room. I don't carry my cell-phone into the room. It is where I go to think, read books, practice playing music, etc... all free from the distractions of my gaming consoles by the TV, the new mail indicator flashing on the computer, etc.
Your mileage may vary, of course... but when your mother-in-law/father-in-law/mother/father/etc come for a visit, you would also have a room that would be somewhat "safe" to put them in... "safe" meaning that your house doesn't burn down when they try to figure out how to turn down the radio.
Takuryu
PS: You could help out the economy here and buy one of our fine, high-tech toilets.
The most important thing to have is a really big computer room with lots of air-conditioning vents and outlets everywhere. Maybe a squareish room with low counters along all the walls, with appropriately-placed power and CAT-5 access. If you have this, its okay for the rest of the house to be Stone Age-style :-)
Klingon programs don't timeshare, they battle for supremacy.
They can detect huffing and puffing at 100 meters. Or you could wait for the next generation housing, which will be made of sticks.
Design your house so that you can add a solar power array. Dollars to doughnuts there will be some incentives for doing stuff like this in the future and it might even save you money in the long run. You can add a 2.6kW solar array for $23,000 as was done in Rochester NY recently, it works quite well. You can sell any excess power back to your utility and also check the status of your solar arrays online.
i am planning a house too, and i will put my bedroom in a faraday cage.
...
....
:) or be able to tell the tap if i want drinking cold or showering hot .....
.. well a motion detector that places a nice red dot on anyone entering the area would be cool too ...
...
cellphone signals, computer radiation, high/low voltage cabling radiation goes byebye...
if you plan it nicely you can still have your tv stuff there, just use a projector with mirrored image (back projection)
why? just think of your office, the phone in your pocket... the phones next to you
now you sleep 6-8 hours, at least have all the bad stuff shielded from you and your family - especially small kids
on the other hand i always wanted a sensor like in johnny mnemonic that tells me the water temperature when i open the tap
hmmm
more seriously: i really like the ideo of the house to be in different states depending on time and the number of people being home to automate lights (dicro filter is a nice touch for colour)/..
also temperature control depending on users
maybe have r2d2 bring my coffe or protein shake after my excercise
Use conduit everywhere. I used 1.5" Innerduct in 500 foot spools which is very inexpensive $150. IFRCC. You can get 2" but I found that stiff and hard to bend. Some of my 1.5" runs are double. You do _not_ want to burrow thru the straw just to add another wire.
It's hard to pull a new wire in a nearly full conduit so in my house I pulled wires _alongside_ the conduit while the walls were open and left the conduit for future use. This may not be feasible in straw - so run _more_ conduit.
Lots of conduit - everywhere! More then you think you can ever use. Even then you will eventually want a wire to go where there is no conduit but you can at least cover most bases now.
Whatever amounts or locations that you decide for any wiring (electrical, coax, cat3/5/6, speaker, fiber) install it in conduit. This gives you the ability to "upgrade" the wire in the future using the old as a pull wire for the new. Then in specific locations that you feel may need future capabilities (entertainment areas, computer areas, etc) add a second spare conduit with a pull string installed for potential expansion. One note, this can get VERY expensive so planning it to meet your budget while maximizing your flexibility is important. But, if you have the money, putting everything into conduit and have some spares in the walls can give you some peace of mind.
"Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats." --Howard Aike
I don't think gadgets are really the way to go here. What you want is to make sure that you account for maximum bandwidth from each room to a centralized location. Cat 5 enhanced or Cat 6 would be currently good choices. As time progresses it appears that having every room wired allows you to do a multitude of things sine Ethernet seems like it will virtuall carry EVERYTHING (Multimedia, Internet, Phone, what have you). Probably a minimum of two drops per room with at least on drop up close to the ceiling for mounting a wireless access point in any location or a wired camera if you want something before those wireless TPZ come down in price.
:)
Next, I would suggest that you really don't need gadgets as much as you need a really good powerful centralized home server. Dual (or more if you can afford it) CPUs is a great way to go. Think about it as your central app/file server first and get a few laptops to be used as thin clients. Then add to that box the hardware to become a VoIP "call manager" and the laptops can double as phone stations in addition to some 802.11 Cisco SIP Phones for more practical use. Also add TV functionality to that server so that it can be a PVR with your laptops again working as viewing stations. (If you're Linux based, this is all very easy to do) You can then set up another dedicated machine wherever you have your real TV to act as another head for the PVR on your server. That's why the wiring is important... with Gigabit over copper you can watch live TV from your MythTV PVR.
It' not (and never has been) about the gadgets, it's all about the hardware and what you do with it. Best of luck!
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
I have been imaging a system for running wires in a house, that was intended to facilitate future types of wiring.
I imagine pvc pipes running through most walls in the house. They would all lead to a closet in the basement where all of the networking, a/v, security, home control equipment would be.
Regardless of the type of wiring, you could just knock a new hole in the wall where you knew the pvc pipe was and install what ever kind of outlet you wanted.
put in a big vibrating orb and a magic bucket.
put in a big massive orafice in the wall and then construct an enormous erection in the basement and sit on that.
Invest wisely in networking. PUt USB hub in the toilet. but Make sure there is enough of a hole in the floor for allow for massive movements
don't smoke pot in your hippy house ok ?
Christmas light control systems
Do you mean an on/off switch?!
*cough* crazy Americans!
In your utility closet, have central surge protection for your phone and cable. It's far cheaper to buy industrial strength suppressors for your phone and cable modem than to have individual suppressors. If this will also house your server, put in a good UPS.
But not just mythtv.. get a really powerful server with a bunch of encoder cards and an xbox for the frontend on each tv..
This isn't a gadget, but it's a life saver when you need to add new gadets, run new cable or fix a busted pipe. It's cheap, comes in many different sizes and styles and can be installed/repaired by anyone.
I've lived in and completely rewired (electrical) and wire (network) two old homes (1905 and 1914 respectively) during the past five years. The one thing that is key to being able to account for future developments is having at least two hollow channels from top to bottom that can be accessed on every floor. Typically, your plumbing is already run like that. Electrical less so, but it should be. And phone/data also should be. So since you're building from the ground up, make sure to have one channel for electricity and another for phone/data or just data if you plan on using VoIP.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Don't worry about the Christmas lights now, you can always fake it later if need be.
Something neat like a button on the wall that whips out a hidden keypad and monitor and lets you edit the election results, de-footprint the logs, and then remove the backdoor all with no trace.
(BOFH styled sarcasm)
That was fun.
Now let's get serious.
The United States Of America is 03w3nd.
If you voted electronically, your vote when it was converted to digitized data disappeared at the speed of light. NO human can see that, no human can audit it or follow it physically even if they could see it, which they cant.
So your vote did not count.
Because your vote did not count, your right to vote was denied.
Now you need to fill out an election/fraud complaint form.
Tell them your RIGHT TO VOTE WAS DENIED
The media has a blackout, so YOU HAVE TO FILE A COMPLAINT.
What risky position?
I have large removable baseboards. I could rewire my entire house without ANY construction. My sister had one leaky pipe in her 'standard construction' house, and no she has two huge holes in her living room ceiling.
To the original poster: Think about vertical as well as horizontal chases. Don't put ANYTHING where you can't get to it. Reduce as much as you can exterior wall penetrations.
Get used to the three little pigs jokes. Everyone thinks they are the first to think of it...
Good Luck.
Speaking as a person who lived in a house that was the first on its block to be wired for electricity back in 1905 (completely ineptly, by the original owner of the house) I can tell you that power is a more faithful source of headaches than other sorts of wiring. You should probably worry more about power wiring than signal wiring. Figure out where your computers will go and wire that room as if it were a laundry room. Make sure your computers never share a circuit with a microwave oven or other high amperage kitchen appliances. (Also vacuum cleaners.) Remember where the safe places to drill are, put lots of outlets in every room, slink ethernet and fiber through conduits that you can still access later, and by the time things become a problem, you'll be long dead. Wireless will become much more prevalent in coming years so you're probably OK. I wouldn't mod my house for Christmas lights- unless I were trying to get on Slashdot with a Linux-controlled light display (or if my wife were really going to push it). Put solar cells on your roof instead. In California at least, you significantly increase the resale value of your house. (Unlike Christmas lights- what if you sell to non-Christians?) And you can save on your electric bill and your taxes. I know one guy at work who charges his Prius from current off his roof and hardly pays anything for electricity.
If you want to get fancy- and if it's legal- you can have your electrician route your AC wall current through a point in the basement where you can insert surge protectors, so that you can get relatively clean AC right out of the wall instead of having ugly power strips all over your floors. I can come up with more ideas but I think they'll all be prohibited by the electrical code in your area. My dream home would have multiple, high-amperage outlets in every room, with an individual power meter at each one, and a remotely controllable fusebox. I hate having to get dressed whenever I blow a fuse.
Depending on where you live, wiring shouldn't even be your main concern. If you don't live in a warm area, I'd spend my money on good insulation and a high efficiency heater. I live in the Bay Area, and houses here have these little wall heaters in one central area- they're completely laughable if you live in an area with real weather that requires homes to have radiators or baseboards in every room. But the price for gas and heating oil is quickly getting ridiculous- even here, where it rains during winter, just keeping the wall heater going costs twice as much as the electricity going into the house.
Just place 2 lengths of string/rope along each conduit from a central point (fuse box/basement) then plaster over it. /Rocket Science
..... I cannot see you needing to pull 1.5" PE gas pipes - just wires.
If you need another cable/cable standard - just tie it to the string and pull - then pull it back with the other length of string.
Just ensure that each room has 1 point to do this from ie (back of wardrobe etc)
The only "new" item you will need in the future are wires (hopefully low voltage DC cables, instead of 120/240AC)
Maybe a wall safe would be a good thing to put in now, rather than cutting into the dry wall later.
Poster mentioned PTZ cameras, but not where they'd be... Don't forget to run the cable high enough.
Parent mentioned fingerprint scanners... What method of connectivity would those need? I'd hate to try to run USB through the house... hubs, everywhere!
I had a sucky sig.
to check this place out, they have all kinds of x10 stuff- also if you're planning to integrate any kind of automation i recommend you have a look at this guy's page. If during the course of this process of gadgetizing you find yourself needing really odd custom items, try asking at your local wheelchair shop.
imo you should seriously consider wiring every outlet seperately to a central location. This way you can unhook them from the breaker panel and connect them to whatever control equipment you wan't (basically the same as structured cabling for networks)
If it's not already obvious, I'm advising you to build your house as if it were flex office space.
Yeah, cause concrete doesn't wick moisture or anything...
Before building the house, dig a large pit in the ground and sink some geothermal radiators. Where I live (Michigan), we can dig down about 5 feet and reach an area that is about 53dF year-round. If I threw a radiator down there, I could effectively use the Earth to liquid cool pretty much anything, including a server or even the whole damn house.
It is all about surface area... Do the math...
More
I'm aware it's been said, but above all, run conduit. No other current solution is more easily upgradable or futureproof.
Put TV jacks in every room except bathrooms.
Put a TV jack in the bathroom as well... Since the price of LCDs are dropping, you might find the morning or evening news a welcome addition to your daily shower.
It is definitely a selling feature...
More
Weather monitoring station. Probably somewhere high up for the sensors, with a more convenient location for the display. Presumably, these will be LAN appliances some day, needing only ethernet.
Digital interface for an aerial antenna. If you ever want to transmit pirate TV like the telestreet movement in Italy, or do the A/D conversion of over-the-air television closer to the source.
Lighting control bus. Like X-10 works over power lines, perhaps more flexibility would be available if the control circuit has its own data bus.
Irrigation control. Depending on climate, of course.
Whole house audio.
Whole house video.
Toaster network.
That's all I can think of off the top of my head, except for the obvious computer network thing, of course.
Language students: Don't try to learn English here. This ain't it.
Auxiliary 12 volt wire?
You could embed glowstrips in the floor to delineate specific routes in your home for when you get in late, so you don't have to turn the lights on to get where you're going, and then have to make your way back to turn them off and bumping your way back in the dark to get to bed.
Run ethernet everywhere. You may not need it if wireless eventually beceomes fast enough. But you can always use your wires to send DC power over the lines to run cameras, motion detectors, etc. And they'll send their data back over the wires. It's nice and clean, a lot less devices to plug in in each room.
Also, consider wiring for a whole-house speaker system. Great if you want to have parties and you can control the system from each room over ethernet cables.
CONDUIT! For the love of God, CONDUIT!
If you're really big on the idea of upgrading in the future, you seriously need conduit. It will save hours of your time in the future, as well as encourage you to do more upgrades! (Upgrade all my CAT-5 to CAT-5E, SURE! No prob!) Well, ok, so maybe it isn't quite that simple, but still, conduit will save you the hassle of drilling through walls, climbimg around in the attic and crawlspace.
Also, make a central patch panel somewhere in your house. If it's already built, put it in the garage where your cable and phone come in, if the house is still in the planning stages, create an MDF room! (Where you house all your patching, as well as your file server and MP3 server than can play any song to any room in the house.)
...Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been informed.
Lightning switches are these interesting little transmitters that require no batteries or electricity - they generate their own through a small piezometer.
They're portable, versatile, and relatively cheap. You should look into them.
at the corners of the eves, bring in 110 power and put them on a single circuit. then bring them back to a single box for a timer, or switch. Very handy for xmas lights.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
A near-future gadget might be window panes that double as monitors and/or change transparency as needed. You definitely want to run some wires to the windows so that when this gadget becomes a reality you're half-way there already.
Also definitely make room for built-in speakers, and a small built-in display/control unit in every room for your automation needs. I know, everybody says to use a remote-control pad and TV for this, but sometimes you just don't want to put a TV in a room (reception room), or just don't want to turn it on for adjustments, or you may not feel like looking for your misplaced pad.
Just thought I'd toss that in there. It claims to be able to handle something like 0 deg F non-condensing -- it didn't make it past 40 deg F in our field test.
No security, etc. etc.
Who knows what's going to be available in a few years. If we could predict that, we'd probably be rich. But things like fibre optic cables are coming down in price and there's new inventions all the time. So I think the trick would be to devise a system that allows you to run new cable easily. Using tubing that allows cables to easily be strung through is probably your best bet.
Many of the networking boxes try to lock you in.
Instead bring in conduit into the attic or in the basement, and then finally bring the conduit into large gang boxes. Be generous in space for it. If you are planning 10 lines, a double gang box will work, but you will appreciate the ease of using a 4 gang box. From here, you can do ethernet, s-video, rj6, etc down the same conduit.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You might want to put a Cat5 jack in the garage where you would put an irrigation controller. See AccuWater.com for the latest in weather-based irrigation controllers. (Disclaimer: I am the inventor)
[Apologies for posting these under another reply thread earlier - it was unintentional]
As cat5 cannot transfer data at 1 GBps. If you ever have all-GB network, you'll be sorry you didn't use cat6.
Your arguments make sense, but you're just feeding a troll.
"Persistence is annoying success." - ghee22 11:28:1999 - 10:53:PM
Get a generator.
1. Buy this book:l e=respu bs.htm
http://www.bicsi.org/Content/Index.aspx?Fi
2. Install conduit EVERYWHERE. See www.carlon.com
If you are going for a nifty look, try and hide the TV behind something (i'm using an oil painting). Hook it up so that the painting lifts/slides out of the way when you turn on the TV. Keeps it hidden when you aren't watching it, and lends a bit of elegance to the place.
As for the Christmas light controller info, this link http://computerchristmas.com/ has awesome info on hardware for controlling Christmas light displays. It can also be used for controlling other devices.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube
How else are you going to get sandwiches from one end of the house to the other?
Also,
-Lots of big wide conduit for whatever else you decide to put in later.
-Tunnels for the electric trains to go through the walls.
-Foor-mounted fishtank with transparent lift-off flooring for feeding and cleaning. Preferably Piranhas.
unless it's wet -- then wireless reception will be on the bottom of your list of worries.
straw is a non-conductor, so it is transparent to electromagnetic radiation (except light, of course). Also, any straw we have ever seen or bought was baled with baling twine.
I have seen straw bale houses. If constructed right, they work very well. Just don't let the straw get wet.
If you make sure the conduits have rounded corners, you can almost always get a stiff wire through (thick coaxial cable is actually quite good, although you can get built-for-that guide wires as well). You just know that SOMEONE is going to cut that string or placeholder wire at some point.
I'm surprised nobody has suggested this yet.
Make a closet behind the area where you will have the entertainment center. If possible, have the back of the TV and the Stereo protrude into the closet (by using an entertainment center with the back removed). That way, all the wiring will be easily accessible from within the closet. Have all the ethernet and power cables run to the closet. That way, you have one central place for your servers, printers, virtual reality transducers, sub-vocal mind-reading control hubs, and don't forget the old primitive hologram generator.
Oh yah, and the breaker box, too.
I always thought it'd be neat to set up the sound system with motion detectors, so the sound can follow you (I know, that's been done already), and potentially, connecting several in the main media rooms to trangulate your position and optimize the position of the speakers with little pivot motors to give optimal surround sound for movies and other media. Shouldn't be all that hard to wire up the motion detectors together to figure out where you are in the room...
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
I second the idea of an efficient heating system. I recently built a new house in Maryland, on the same windy hilltop as the old one, and speced it out to make it cheap to heat and cool. I went with modular construction, 6 inch walls, and a high SEER heat pump backed up by propane furnace that is 96 percent efficient. The house is 25 percent bigger, with double the roof area of my old house, which was built right after WWII and heated with oil. Last winter, it cost almost $400 a month combined for electricity and oil during the dead of winter. My base electric bill for lighting, hot water, computers, cooking, etc is about $60 or so. So far, the worst electric bill I have faced is about $140.00, and I have burned less than 50 gallons of Propane since the beginning of the heating season, and that will probably be about it as the temperatures trend up. I also keep the new house warmer than the old place, as I kept the heat down to 60-65 to save on oil, and keep the new one at 70. Summertime electric bills never exceeded $100. This is more of a testament to the inefficiency of the old house, with its leaky single pane windows, warped exterior doors, poor or nonexistent insulation, and an ailing 20 year old oil furnace.
One option for heating and cooling that I seriously looked at, but ended up rejecting due to the high initial cost was a Geothermal Heat Pump . At the then current prices for fuel and electricity, the payback time for the extra initial investment I estimated to be about 12 years or so. With a rapidly tightening construction budget, I decided to go with a more conventional system, but the concept was viable. Given about a 25 percent increase in the cost of electricity (very likely in the next few years), sharp increases in the price of Propane (already happened), or having to heat a larger space would have made a Geothermal system not only viable, but the smart move. Geothermal systems won't crap out like a conventional heat pump in very cold weather, necessitating the need to fall back on expensive backup heat, since the heat exchange medium is subsurface ground, which stays at a nearly constant temperature year-round. In the summertime, the energy requirements for air conditioning also favor the geothermal system, since the ground a few feet down is already as cool as, or cooler than the desired temperature of the house. I have heard anecdotal stories of 5,000 square foot houses in the Carolinas which cost less than $100 a month to cool with Geothermal systems in the heat of July, but I cannot verify this directly.
Be sure to have proper lighting.
>
<url: http://www.gadgets.co.uk/lav-nav-nightlight.html/
Wiring closet: everyone is suggesting run ethernet wires instead of wireless; good for security. wire everywhere. I would go a step further, and include in plans a specific central closet for electronics -hub, router, server, PVR/Satellite/cable feed. Include a special hidden spot (in the ceiling?). This would be where to hide things like the disk your security cameras etc. will feed to. What good is a surveillance system, if the first thing stolen is the recorded evidence?
Unless you live in rural Minnesota, water will probably be an issue. I would suggest a grey water system, designed to route output from sinks, washing machines, bathtub etc. to a tank that would recycle it for things like flushing toilets, watering the lawn. A fancier system would have automated valves so you could reroute the drains depending on perceived quality of the drain water. I wonder if you could get away with this - probably still be illegal to water your lawn this way during "no watering" times, or people would just run the bathtub to get enough to water the lawn. One set of doom-mongers say the southern USA will run out of water in 10 years.
Run RS-232 if you think there's a realistic chance you will use it.
Also I might suggest that if you are really electrically adept you might want to run some sort of cable with a lot of pins; then you could make up adapters for anything for which the resistance of the cable in question is appropriate, just be sure to remember which pins are which.
Don't forget telephone wiring, a jack in every room if you can.
I'd suggest, if you don't mind buying all these, a bundle of this composition for all rooms:
* CAT6e RJ45-RJ45 8-pin for gigabit Ethernet. As nice as wireless is, if you're going to the trouble of wiring a house for everything else, it's worthwhile to run gigabit. You can still stick an Airport Express in a power outlet somewhere.
* Good phone line, RJ11-RJ11, at least 4 pins, though 6 wouldn't be bad. This should be of good quality -- for good voice and for home automation if you are into that
* RS232 serial -- if you might want to run two from one place, run two 9-pin (perhaps on one cable, if you feel like splicing two pairs of DB9s onto each end of a cable designed for DB25 serial) runs. Though you might just run one serial or two on different cables, it's not as big as it once was but it might be nice to have sometime.
* 75-ohm coaxial cable for TV. You probably don't want to run this everywhere, but anywhere you might want to install a TV. Don't forget to have a cable drop at your headend if you have a cable modem.
* Don't forget good electrical wiring, if you don't have it already!
When you are old, want to kick back .. read a book and don't want your annoying kids/grandkids using your technology to play games... you will wonder why you wired your home
I suggest running all of your cat5, phone, etc. wires in decent sized PVC pipes. When the wires go bad or you need to upgrade them (to fiber for example) it is a simple matter of pulling new wires through the PVC conduit. If you are making a long run with lots of turns (more than 3 or 4), you should try to make at least one of the turns use a PVC elbow connector that can open. This is in case the wires get stuck as you pull and you need to access them in the middle of the run. Oh, and although you can pull new wires in using your old wires, I suggest you leave some type of plastic string in the PVC to pull with. Don't use cheap string. You want something that can old up for 20+ years.
Hope this helps.
Probably some interesting items that you can pickup here. I also strongly agree people mentioning leaving some empty conduit throughout your walls. This is a MUST for future expansion possibilities. It will keep install costs down for any future wiring you might need to do.
Run conduit in the walls and ceilings, with a couple of pull strings in each pipe so you can run the newest kinds of cable (or replace older lines) after the fact.
I've run conduit for some wiring retrofits, and you simply cannot beat it for sturdiness and ability to pur new stuff in. Power wiring has to be heavier when run in conduit, but yopu'll NEVER kill a circuit nailing up a shelf again.
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
A few VT100 or perhaps VT510 terminals scattered around the house... kitchen, bathroom a.s.o
You never know when you might start smoking. Or even if you want to repaint a room down the road, you can be like "Wow, that was easy, because I installed the ventilation to help the paint dry 20 years ago..."
Yeah? So I turned your toaster into an alarm clock. I'm an EET thats what we do.
During World War II, the English had invented a device to literally set the English Channel on fire to prevent the island from being taken by Nazi forces. There were limited tests, but no widespread deployment. It is said that one of the many reasons the German forces did not invade England was for fear of a flaming death. Here is an interesting website about it with a few pictures.
Today, you can get a lighting control system for any communication medium -- proprietary, ethernet, wireless. In my opinion, the wired ones are usually cheaper and more reliable than the wireless ones.
If you plan to put in a lighting control system -- since you are energy conscious or you like to be able to set the mood or you just like another gadget to play with -- it might be prudent to think ahead and wire the house for it.
(I know some people who claim that ethernet based dimmers work just fine, but in my installation at home, I prefer to know that the system will not collapse just because some Worm is utilizing 100% of the bandwidth on my LAN.)
Most proprietary systems require at least four conductors -- power, gnd, and two for 485 or like communications.
Zone your HVAC system. Different areas need different amounts of heating/cooling. No use cooling the basement in order to cool the upstairs bedrooms at night. There are various systems (electronically controlled vents, water-based systems with separate pumps, etc). If necessary, install the vents now and rezone as your budget permits.
Look into home automation. You can use occupancy sensors to decide if a room needs to be heated (you used zoning, right?), turn off lights when nobody is in the room, do weird things when someone shouldn't be in the room (the best was an alarm system which made all lights blink), etc.
Conduit in the walls. Ideally you'll want one box per wall to start. Your headend will handle distribution of phones/ethernet/coax/multi-room audio/etc. Leave space for wall mounting.
Don't forget electrical. Give yourself lots of outlets and avoid placing too many on a single circuit. You can even go as far as setting up hallway lights on a separate board, powered by a UPS.
You mention places for things like routers. Keep these outlets on a separate breaker so things don't go down when you change a lightbulb.
I use Macs to up my productivity, so up yours Microsoft!
If you use the 2" conduit, be sure to put insulating plugs where it comes out to the room, you can move a lot of cold air thru a 2" hole. Also at your wiring closet, put in a good high capacity UPS to tidy you over during power interuptions and equally, make sure you have a dedicated line supplying that power. On runs of signal/communication wires or conduit, maintain the widest possible gap between it and the power (120VAC) wiring so as to minimize inductive coupling. If any room has a wall or wall run cut up by two entrances/exits, make sure that there is a signal outlet between them. Similarly, if you're doing the kitchen island thing, send signal wire to that island. Consider the requirements for a robot vacuum, beam of light or radio barrier. And with your concrete encapsulated straw house, definitely put in water sensors and auto cutoff valves for the water supply, the washing machine and the water heater. Concrete will crack and straw will rot in the presense of water, especially if you have the curtain crawlers that will stress test everything. All in all, good luck.
Ok, first off, and I cant stress this enough - two conduit tubes per wall per room. Excepting the bathroom. This conduit can be used in the future, even without being populated. This way, there is nothing to really "retrofit". I would say to use 1 - 1 1/2" conduit.
Now, if you have the $$ - I would recomend laying fiber. Remember, even though you put conduit in - your fiber must be put into flex tube for protection. I would put two runs of each single mode and multi mode fiber. Unless your certified in terminating it, I would have a licensed/certified person terminate the fiber into connections.
Do you plan on having an audio system? Maybe not now, but in the future? Make sure to run an extra conduit, and cut a zip box into the top corner of each room. Bathroom included on this one. And dont forget, some high end systems can use fiber to connect the speakers. I would say to put fiber, cat5, and coax into these drops.
You mentioned wireless. I would use wrap boards with cealing mount antennas. Put some conduit into the cealing - with a 1'x1' lockable box that becomes part of the cealing. If you run MikroTik's level 5 router os the units, you can have multiple AP's act as one, run WPA/WPA2, and for PC devices, also have them use IPSec back into a "Private" network.
TV? Yep, I would run seperate conduit for this - Pick logical locations for this. One in the bathroom too. You never know, you could want to put a little 13" tv in there for the umm.. rest breaks.
If you haven't already confirmed the building plan, I would take an area in the home, and put a 6x6 equipment room in. This is where all the conduit would terminate. Buy an equipment rack, and stud in into the floor there. But a couple patch pannels, I'm fond of the panduit minicom modular 48 port patch pannels, however, anything will work. Buy a fiber termination box for the rack as well. Put your phones into 66 blocks on the wall. I would also use cat5 for my phones, and not cat3. With the cost of cat5 being so low, it just makes sense. I would also use cat6 for the network in a new install.
Thought of VoIP? This sets you up great for it. You have a central place to put your VoIP server in, and connect it back into your PSTN network.
Anyway, Just some design thoughts. Hope they help.
http://www.accelerateglobalwarming.com
Tie the string to a piece of foam rubber, stick it in one end of the conduit, put the shop vac on the other end. Of course after you have cable and want to add more then you need the string already in place.
Along side your regular AC house wiring, you should run DC wiring. You could install a single transformer running at the highest DC voltage you wish to supply, then install voltage dividers at each wall outlet, so that you can select the voltage you want at point of use.
What does this mean? NO MORE WALL WARTS! Also, you'll save quite a bit of power because the wall warts are very inefficient and burn power (1-5 watts) even when nothing is plugged into them. In a modern (esp. geek) house, those multiple small loads running 24/7 add up really fast.
"Research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." -- Wernher von Braun
Saw this on some cable channel, custom homebuilder that built timber houses or some such as modulars!
Most homes have baseboard trim. Mine happens to be 3" so this wouldn't work too well, but many architectural styles allow for 5-7" baseboard to look good. Route a cable chase behind the baseboard. Figure out a way to make drops for the different levels of your house that go to the baseboard chases. This is even easier than conduit if you end up wanting to drop new/more cabling.
HTH.
The bathroom should be tiled with LCD displays the size of normal tiles. Each one should have it's own individual feed. It will only be good if the bathtub is also a bowl shaped big screen TV.
They will just have to solve the electricution problem.
Straw + Lots of electric cables packed as tight as possible.. Hmmmmm
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
This is what I mean, a simple KISS solution that is GENIUS in its simplicity to solve a difficult problem!
Why not an insolated, temp controlled space for harware? Heck, why not a rack-mount closet?
I would check out x10.com
They have the coolest gadgets for the home. Radio controlled light switches, dimmers, motion sensor controls...and all able to be controlled from a central location, either by computer or remote. Setup lights to activate for time periods during a vacation, etc.
Typically, straw buildings are plastered onto a base of wire mesh. If you're using this method, be aware of the RF screening effect of wire mesh. Depending on whether you're using this and where you're using it, you might end up with RF screening that screws up Wifi.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Run a 1" smoothwall flexible duct from as many sides of as many rooms as you can stand to a central communications closet. Some types come with pull string already blown into the duct.
At each room end, terminate the duct in a deep 4-square box mounted flush with the drywall. Run duct into the basement, crawl space, attics, roof, and to the phone/cable entrance on the rear of the house.
In my house, I ran from the wall through the sill into the crawl space on the first floor. I ran from the wall into the attic on the second floor. I had the electrician install a single 3" EMT conduit between the crawl space and the attic. My "telecommunications closet" is in the crawl space, and if I had it to do over again, I would sacrifice space on the first floor for something I could access and work in more easily.
Do a little study on installation practices and code requirements. Keep bends to a minimum. Lots of information on the net.
Now you can pull whatever kind of wire/coax/fiber into any wall you want for the life of the house. In 20 years, you may want some type of cable in the wall that hasn't even been invented yet!
With hay bale and plaster, you might want to make sure you have some good mounting materials in the walls for things like 80 lb-100 lb flat panels that will be wall mounted. One other way to mount flat panels against the wall would be to have them suspended by wires from a ceiling mounting board, similar to museums and such. That way, you're not putting any more holes than necessary in the walls.
I'll be starting a rammed earth home later this year and one thing I'm thinking of is coming up with some kind of flip up chair rail that will provide easy access to wiring channels. Maybe some fold out molding around doorways as well and hollow vegas for ceiling wiring channels.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Cat 5 is not secure, don't even try to kid yourself into thinking it is.
why do you think people still use intrusion detection with fibre, when it's even harder to sniff traffic on fibre than it is with Cat 5.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Separate all of the components to make the house more flexible in the future. Look into the open building concept. http://www.habraken.com/john/resident.htm
We will be doing geothermal. It looks like the best option will be 5-ft deep trenches for the ground loop; we don't have a large body of water nearby, and drilling down is apparently more expensive than the trench. We're in upstate NY, and I've been getting killed by heating in our current house. This is most of the reason we're going with straw bale--great insulation for the price.
On a more serious note, I'll probably stick up a web cam during construction; probably interesting to some of the geek crowd, and then I can repurpose it to monitor my christmas lights over the net. We could even use the web cam to direct a nail gun during construction, and then repurpose it to deal with any wolves that might come by!
... and some aluminium foil suits for yourself and family, with that amount of RF suggested around you an oncology test can also help.
If your house is going to be made out of straw, don't use gadgets that produce unnecessarily large amounts of sparks. No, seriously.
so is plaster - neither will keep moisture out.
Granted, most of it will be outside (wind, temperature, rain collection, ...etc.)
However, some of it will be inside, and you have to plan where to put the sensors (think no sunlight for thermometers, barometers, ...etc.).
If you want it linked to your computing platform, then see how you would run the cables (if it is wired that is).
Another thing you may want to consider is Home Automation (there are several products available, commercial and freeware, on various platforms). Check what features you want, and plan for the cabling/sensors
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
alright, I came in really late but perhaps the original poster may read this.
Put in a -lot- of outlets. stucco walls are hard to change, make sure you have enough boxes everywhere. a 110v plug is around 55 cents and a box for it is about 77 cents and up. make sure you put in plenty.
alarm wiring is uselly thicker than cat5e. you can pre run the alarm wireing just in case you ever want to add an alarm later
phone jacks, ethernet, you have covered, dual coax, although it's days are numbered.
think of putting in the phone line before the slab is poured. you can hide it now and have a fake visible one for a theif to cut.
extra empty boxes, connected to empty pvc tubing. you may want to pull in somthing new in ten years
I have this wacky idea of incorperating an area of plastic sheeting into my sheet metal roof, the plastic would be up near the ridge line and be facing south. Because it's plastic, it will be tranperent to microwaves. Therefore you can install a Primestar mini style dish compleatly inside your attic.
Ever thought of putting the washer/dryer in a little well that has a drain to the outside? if a hose burst (common failure point) being in a well of a few inches could save you a lot of water damage.
don't use ventlation hoses that are integeral to the slab. if water ever floods in to them how the heck are you going to clean them out?
deal with the poor spelling
I am a pro. Use 3/4 inch conduit to all data/phone jacks. I like to put one next to every electrical outlet. Electrical outlets are almost always 1/2 inch conduit. Three twelve gauge wires fit easily into a 1/2 pipe and 12 guage will carry twenty amps. It's pretty rare to find an outlet that feeds more than twenty amps. You 'utility room' will have your hot water heater, electric load center and a wall mount rack for networking/AV gear. I like wall mounted because it keeps it out of the water. If you home run all your conduit then you're going to have one heck of a junction box. I like to mount it right above the server rack. Usually at least 12"x12"x6". In a traditional built dwelling I like a 1.5 - 2 inch conduit into both the attic and the crawl space. In a straw bail construction the south wall is usually the corridor/window wall for passive solar heating. I would run the big conduit pipe to there so it's easy to pull in stuff that got forgotten earlier. Try to design a drop ceiling for that front corridor, you can hide quite the cabling nightmare in that. :)
I suggest placing a few large water tanks underneath the foundation with inlets and outlets to be plumbed up through the concrete. Then you can put water blocks on all of the CPUs and GPUs in your entire house and use the entire earth as your heat sink. You may or may not need a small pump to help circulate the cool water up and hot water down.
Another CPU cooling idea is to place Tees in your water pipes before they reach your water heater. Then connect a water cooling loop to it and run all of your water right through your CPU/GPU water blocks. It may also preheat some of your water before it gets to the water heater. A hot water circulator could circulate the hot water from the CPU to the water heater inlet.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Smurf tube is ok for managing cables in the attic or basement, or if you have to route up an exterior wall's stud space.
When you're dealing with a large chase, for example, basement-to-attic, you're better served with the PVC.
My builder put a 1.5" PVC chase from attic to basement (properly firestopped, of course.) It's saved my butt more times than I can count.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
- dishwasher - washing machine - microwave - oven toaster - blender - mixer or kitchen robot - absorber (the thing that gets the smoke out of the kitchen) - regular oven - ceramic cooking hub - gas cooking hub with leak alarm - refrigerator - TV, home entertainment center - server room (datacenter) with two 40" racks properly wired - power over WiFi station (when it becomes avaiable) - leave place for the video cables for all the security cameras, sensors and stuff
A Far-a-day keeps the brain waves away
It would be especially great to have computers get power this way, so that the hot and noisy power supply could be left out of them.
Already becoming popular in the third world. Low energy consumption, high output, long life. It will get ridiculously cheap in the next few years. check out superbrightleds.com
Why don't you just build a giant Faraday Cage and live in that? If you live in Florida or near a coast, just make it to float and ride up four poles, one on each corner. You might want to delay that new car purchase for a wee bit: http://www.newpath4.com/forsalespacecraftenginecon stantpowertheory.htm til uhm we see what develops.
As far as i can tell i have 9 or 10 years before i have to worry about this problem, unless i stumble across a winning lottery ticket someplace, but i am probably going to marry a veternarian, so all is well :) I have put a lot of though into house construction and how to geek proof things. Right now i'm looking at something between 2000 and 2500 sq ft, 2 story with a full basement. First off, my long-term girlfriend and i have already agreed that she gets an office on the ground floor, near the exit (in case we end up putting her practice on property) which can be converted to a fouth bedroom should the need arise, i get half of the basement for my purposes, which includes me 'geek' room which will be like 15'x15' with anti-static tiles, wired like a pinball machine, with several desks, tables, both sitting and standing height and my chest of computer tools. Plus a separate, attached 7x7 wiring closet (or bigger) on one side that will be the nerve center for the entire house. Also doing probably a 10x10 section with 1' concrete walls and a lot of insulation along with a fireproof door.
I figure by then fibre will be to our doors (it's already to mine, and i live in podunk, Indiana, the only way Sprint lets us use it right now is DSL, but my whole county and the surrounding counties have had massive installs of fiber in the past couple of years.). This leads me to conclude that each room is getting two runs of 3/4" or 1" conduit (covering two walls with data outlets), each room with the exception of bathrooms, but including kitchen, living room, maybe cable TV to the master closet. Each conduit may terminate on its own in the wiring closet in the basement (tagged with it's room and wall) or the two pipes for each room may merge and run via a single 2" to the closet, not sure. I like making seperate runs for each, would make new pulls easier, but i don't plan on doing it too often, so not sure. Right now i'm looking to run gigabit fiber AND cat6, cable, and if i end up getting a PBX (there may be a small one on property if there's a vet clinic there...) a 2nd cat6 for phone use.
Also i WANT to run pulls for wired cameras at the enterance ways, shop, drive way, my computer room, her office door, and any others i can find a place and purpose for. (just have to convince the missus there's a purpose) and do outdoor plugs / weatherproof boxes outside in a variety of locations low and high, roof and ground for outdoor lighting, etc.
Gonna end up with a lot of money in a house, but oh da-hell well. If i'm going to spend 2/3 of that to buy somebody else's problems i may as well go a little further in debt and build what i want, then i have nobody to blame problems on but me!
Using conduit is a great idea. I can't recommend it enough. Make sure it's installed according to the National Electric Code and local regulations though. There's some regulations as to how many bends you can put in a conduit run without using a condulet, pull-L, etc. There's also regulations about the types of materials you can use. (EMT, ENT, MC cable, etc.) You'll also have to look at your box fill and conduit fill calculations.
Another thing to consider is separation between certain types of communication cables to avoid interference. I shouldn't need to say it but I will anyway: Never run communication cable and power in the same raceway!
It may be a pain but in the long run, it'll help you out. When you go to sell you're house, some buyers might object to purchasing a house that's not up to code. Also, if the place burns down and the insurance company finds out that it's not up to code, they'll deny your claim.
By the way, I'm a building engineer with an electrician's license. When in doubt, hire a licensed electrician.
Depending on where you live, the availability of some items may vary. Here in Sweden we have SELGA, that has the tubes and the boxes
In the US you have Home Depot that can provide you with boxes and flex conduits. (couldn't find any hard conduits right away on their web site, but I know that they have.)
Considering that you build a house with straw insluation, I actually would go for metal boxes and conduits together with arc-fault breakers to try to keep the risk of fire caused by electricity at a minimum. Even though the metal boxes and conduits themselves are an added risk of shorts, the sparks will be contained better.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Plan your lighting controls and layouts carefully. Are they spread-spectrum flourescent? Dimable? Track? Internally mounted?
How will they be automated?
Your cabling can be re-run by yourself, assuming that you plan that properly. But changing a lighting system tied to a live electric system is a real pain in the tail. Shutting off power to your location facility, I mean, your house is not trivial, nor is the pain of working in darkness. And there goes clocks, timers, etc. And it could theoretically kill you, though it probably won't.
The ______ Agenda
This really isn't an electrical gaget but you might also what to take into consideration, if you do any other type of walls other then the straw, Sound proofing the walls. It would make life a lot nicer, especially if you have kids or are ever planning on having them.
http://www.touchtheearthranch.com/Rhome.htm I went to one of these near my house. Definately longer lasting, greener, more efficient and upgradable. Warmer in winter, Cooler in summer. I have a friend who designed a 'micro-tile' method, but it would be much more work, but the four foot square, two foot high stayed at least ten degrees below outside temp in the sun, and Northern California can get a lot of sun.
Don't you mean.. BIZZARO!
Built in, powered through switches inside (So you aren't frying everything/interfering.) but you could take your laptop anywhere if you put in four of those, one in each direction. They sell them at http://www.cantenna.com/ but from what I've read, they're easy to build, and even "I" could probably do it. Building a little roof over them would be great. On the other hand, if you could put in a signal tracker on one, and something to make one move around.... I'm getting ahead of my technical understanding.
Don't you mean.. BIZZARO!
I am planning to setup digitemp sensors on all rooms, using ethernet cabling around the house. Make sure you got good wiring, and lots of it!
love slashdot. populate it. use it. abuse it. hate it. kill it. miss it. stop following links, they only kill servers.
On the rare occasions I was grounded and forbidden to use [device(x)], my 'rents just took a key peice of cable with them; usually the power supply. With wireless devices, you just take the whole toy away.
If you catch them 'cheating', they get more grounding time. a 'wireless' room would probably be a wast of space.
Design a small room where you keep the wireing and stuff. This is also the place you keep your computers.
Pull DVI cables for monitor and USB for the rest out to all rooms and you can have cool computers with just a flatscreen and keyboard + mouse. If you want the computer (like a laptop) in the room just go for wireless. Everything seems to point to the ethernet cables will be obsolete in a not so far future.
Look at where WiFi has gone in the last 2 years...
While I'd be tempted to install loads of conduit, etc, I think wires will be going away very soon. And I mean wireless everything. Computer networking is already there. Audio and video aren't far behind (Tivo w/ WiFi and the AirTunes are hints of the future).
I used to work with a fellow that was planning to build a straw house. It turned out that wolf insurance made it quite a bit cheaper for him to continue living in his trailer.
I don't think you can actually plan for future electronic needs. Who'ld have guessed in 1985 we are all laying computer network cabling in our houses today? There's people with central vacuum cleaners these days. So, best you can do is plan for flexibility. If you wan, make double walls (so you can add pretty much anything later on. I like the idea of straw, but I'ld use modern technologies. Insulation is important, though. You may also try to add natural energy production (solar panels, wind energy, water - see what's possible) and rain water capturing. Building niches for routers and such is good, but make them twice the size needed. Then you'll have some room to spare. Equipment will be added, but new stuff is generally smaller.
If you plan on having a home cinema you should figure out where the speakers will be and run decent quality cable behind the walls.
Maybe run some extra for when the next insane standard like 10.1 comes out.
... Don't forget to build several very very very small rooms around the building, for future nanotech gadgets.
All the houses in my community have geothermal heat pumps. Our energy bill is 2/3 LESS than a comparable-built at the same time. The only problem we had is that the compressor in the smaller House A had some problems but WaterFurnace replace them once the pattern developed. Look at our web site, www.enocommons.org, for more info and send me via the web site if you need additional info.
I expect that pretty soon (10 years) most items will have attached RFID tags. If not, the price ofc tags are dropping, already $1/tag for passive tags.
Advantage? You'll know exactly where in the house is for the first time. No more where's the keys (or laptop).
My cat can eat a whole watermelon
It is obvious that whatever kind of cable you put in, it will not be suitable for the newst stuff. So put in pipes wherever you would put cables, and you can pull in the right cable when time comes. Here i can buy a cheap plastic pipe that is especially for wire, used by electricians, easy to bend and cheap. Maybe you have similar, i can invent a new use for some other cheap pipes. vajk
What gadgets should I plan for, so that I don't have to do a major retrofit?
Put some T/Cs in the slab and various points in the walls. This will help later in tuning your heating system to how your climate affects your house.
Strawbale has great insulation, which is one factor. Thermal mass (concrete, adobe bricks, water) is another factor. If you get solar gain in the winter you can take advantage of it to heat your house.
Conceivably, you might live in a climate with diurnal temperature variations so that shading some of the windows at night in the winter, opening during the day would help your energy budget. Consider running power to south facing window frames in case you wan't to put in automatic blinds that open and close at the right time.
A few things I learned from building my house:
- No matter what you estimate at the beginning, it will cost more.
- No matter what you estimate at the beginning, it will take longer.
- Really look into references for any subcontractors you use. Talk to their former clients for a while. If any doubt, no matter how small (remember, the references will use minimizing language when they talk about deficiencies) keep looking for another bid on the job.
- Good people are worth the money.
- You can't have too much storage space.
- The fewer the roof perforations (drain pipes, etc), the better.
- You can't know in advance where you'll need wires.
To address the last point, install "smurf pipe" (blue, flexible hollow plastic tubes about 3/4" diameter) in your walls, coming down from the attic to wall plates at various locations in your house. It's easy to do this during construction, before you finish your walls. A big hassle to do later.Outdoors, if you're burying utilities, include a hollow conduit. Don't forget to lay down and bury yellow plastic tape about 1 foot on top of everything so future backhoes won't cut your OC-192 lines, gas lines, electric lines, septic lines, etc.
Finally, I'm assuming your straw bale house will have adequate structural integrity, including tying down the roof down throught to the slab so that high winds don't take it away (remember the first of the 3 little pigs), and that the slab is slightly elevated above grade and has good drainage away from the house in all directions so that water doesn't come in and damage your walls, cause mildew, etc.
Good luck on your house! Building it yourself and spending plenty of time thinking about how you live and planning, you should be able to build something that really suits your lifestyle.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
and, PHOTOGRAPH everything during construction - once that stucco goues up, you will never remember where everything is and how it is laid out
Since so little research has been done on strawbale walls - why not do some? 1) Find out if there are moisture problems within the strawbales or on the exterior or interior surface after the strawbales are sealed in. Why? Mositure will cause dryrot of the straw and only a 2% mositure level in the straw will reduce the insulative ability of the straw - in other words double your heating bills!Install transducers in the strawbales wired to some black boxes wired to your computer. Contact USDA's Forest Products Laboratory on how to do it http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/ At the same time you should understand that strawbale construction is likely the least "Green" building material on this planet because of embodied energy - it is a good example of "Green Washing". Embodied energy is the grand sum total of all the energy going into a product or process. So if one includes the cost of water diversion projects to divert water from the Great Lakes into the USA midwest, the cost of oil for fertilizer and deisel to run equipment - naturally has to include the cost of the Iraq war (80 billion? Etc. -- in other words all cost have to be factored in. "There is no free lunch". In the case of straw - one has to remember that only 1% of the plant is used for food - the rest is waste.
We have put in Hunter douglas power rise blinds in almost every window of our house, honeycomb room darkening.
They currently run on 8 AA batteries, but they actually last a long time (like a couple of years, depending on use).
They sell a transformer, so you could run them off of wired DC, assuming you had the correct kinds of wires running to the top of every window.
We have security wires running to the base of every window for intrusion detection, but for the powered blinds you need power at the top of the window.
The IR remote is pretty sweet, and we have some on a timer.
Here are a few articles I wrote that should help you out. They some up my expeirences in building my home and gives an overview of what my wife and I went through in regards to home automation and wiring our home.
4 3/m/217102268
4 3/m/805103668
4 3/m/205108308
Wiring a new Home - http://razorthought.com/eve/ubb.x/a/tpc/f/5251070
List of equipment used in my home - http://razorthought.com/eve/ubb.x/a/tpc/f/5251070
Automating my home - http://razorthought.com/eve/ubb.x/a/tpc/f/5251070
-theclam
http://razorthought.com/eve
All linked to a central computer.
Also I'm sure it was suggested but house temp should be centralized.
DP
"(I) have this unfortunate condition that causes me not to believe a single thing any politician says when a mic's on.
Of course you're going to run TV to the bathroom. Where else can you look at yourself and the TV at the same time. http://www.engadget.com/entry/5203323787711755/
I am surprised that they only are trenching down 5 feet, as deep as the frost line gets up there. 300 miles south down here near Baltimore, they wanted to go down 5 and 7 feet for the ground loop. What you will end up doing might also depend on the soil conditions, which in many areas of Upstate NY are very thin due to glaciation in the last ice age. It cost 5 grand to put in a 400 foot well for my residential water, but a well for heat exchange might be your only option if you hit bedrock at a couple of feet.
I explored the idea of cutting costs for the system by colocating the heat exchanger pipes with the septic system, but the contractor said that building codes would never allow it. Other than the "yuck factor", I saw no valid engineering reason why it wouldn't work, just the excuse that it would cause problems if the septic system needed to be moved someday. Perhaps another way of saving costs would be to recirculate my well water through the heat exchanger, and pump it back into the ground. With a house that has well/septic anyway, I am surprised that there has been no effort to integrate these systems to save costs.
Just put cable trays in the floors and walls. If the runs are big enough, you can then add not only wiring, but plumbing as well. Want to add a bathroom to this bedroom? No problem!
I built a house three years ago. I put conduit everywhere. By that I meant not just for the networking, but for every switch, fire alarm, thermostat, etc. It did add some cost and the electrician thought I was nuts (this was up to commercial, not residential code) but it was worth it.
The reason is that sometime in he future you will probably decide that your cabling is insufficient. Why? Who knows. As some people have mentioned, in 20 years you'll want to yank out the lame-o cat6 and replace it with super-duper multimode 2 gajillohertz waveguides to connect your file server to your realtime holographic TV. Who can say?
Actually I almost hit this limit just cabling the DVD player (in a wiring closet) to the flat panel. The cable that carried the signals was a bundle of coax tubes, plus of course I needed other signals in both directions. What a pain..
But you may also want to add some automation to your light switches, or scan the status of your fire detectors (or replace them with an anamorphic nannycam). _Then_ you'll discover the crappy low-voltage stuff installed by the electrician is up to code but insufficient for your purposes.
Don't worry about DC. It's a nice idea but 1> various devices have different requirements and 2> the electrical loss is huge over the distances being discussed.
Make sure you have sufficient space in your wiring closet. Not just to get to both sides of the patch panel(s) but that the conduits coming in are thick enough to get a whole hell of a lot of audio stuff -- TV etc.
Try to put a network outlet (just a box with a plate) on every wall; ideally in the vicinity of every AC outlet. Don't forget outdoors! Wireless is great for laptops and the like, but a waste of time for desktops, MP3 players, TVs etc. In fact we plug laptops in when doing major file transfers and backups anyway.
Doing your wiring is tedious, but you probably want to do it yourself. The people who wire houses are generally not that good at it (often electricians who want to make more money) and the people who do it professionally (commercial grade) generally won't to a house even if you are willing to pay real money.
Make sure you have a real wiring plan before you start. You'll have to ring everything out anyway, but figuring out after the fact which slot on the patch panel goes to that outlet you want to use on Saturday night two years from now is just no fun.
HTH
Weather monitoring station. Probably somewhere high up for the sensors, with a more convenient location for the display. Presumably, these will be LAN appliances some day, needing only ethernet.
Many already are. They attach to the roof and a cable runs down and connects to a digital weather display, which connects to the computer. If you run the server software, you can have the real-time weather stats updated on a web page. I don't know the residential cost for such a system, but it's almost free for education. If you are planning to build in a remote area, your local television weather station often grant funds the cost because it really helps them forcast the weather when they can get live information accross a grid. Check the schools in your area, many have been using equipment like this for years.
In many areas 'local' weather is actually reported from the next nearest city. For me that is around 30 miles away. But a school just 3 miles away has one, so I can get live wind speed (very helpful during a storm), rainfall, temp, etc that is more accurate for where I live. This display is what you see both on your computer and on the published web page.
The real problem with most new houses isn't not enough insulation, but sloppy construction with too many air leaks and drafts. Make sure your builder knows how to build a "tight" house, and bothers to do it. Specify this in the contract, that the house must pass an energy audit, or the contractor will fix the problems.
Look up Control4 corp. There was a big article on them in Wired a month or two ago. Very Linux-centric. They can set you up with network addressable light switches and power outlets and anything else you can imagine.
Lasers Controlled Games!
Has anybody had any luck with Lutron? http://www.lutron.com/. According to some of the home automation dealers I've spoken to, their network is proprietary but it allows you to use wired devices in new constructions, wireless devices in retrofit constructions and a combination of the two if you really want it.
by local code, around here I think developments with more that six residences are required to run conduit, all commercial, and all industrial is conduit. For houses it's usually romex, which means no conduit to any outlets. Even worse, it means the wire is tacked down to the studs inside the wall, so you have to fish the cavity, rather than taping to the old wire, and pulling a new wire.
I defiantly recommend the conduit idea for any data locations. If you have a two location where you know you will have to pull a lot of wires between, one option is to run a flexible smurf tube between the two locations, which is really handy if you have a lot of horizontal space to cover. As far as outlets go, most residential are rated for 15A, ff one of the vertical slots in the receptacle is in the shape of a sideways T than it's a 20A receptacle. However you can string up to about 12 receptacles on a single 20A breaker. Doing the math, this means you can only load them all up to a fraction of the full rating. If you have big plans for a large amount of equipment in one location, you might want to run 1 or 2 dedicated receptacles to a single area.
And on that note, don't plug in an old copier or laser printer into a shared outlet with your computers. Old switch mode power supplies for these devices pull current only at the peak of the waveform, but they pull something like 30-40 amps, which doesn't cause the thermal element in your breaker to trip, and it's not big enough to cause the instant magnetic element to trip. But it can sure screw up your voltage waveform, which can cause your power supply in your computer to wig out(it sees extra zero crossing in the voltage).
Dilbert's Ultimate House has some good ideas, and some silly ones.
http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/duh/
Ideas that I really liked were the home theater room. I just recently got a used presentation projector and we had our first "movie night" this weekend in the living room. We moved the couches and chairs around, took some stuff off of the wall to make a blank spot, popped a bunch of popcorn and invited some of the kids friends over. It was a blast. I am currently trying to figure out how to mount the projector so it is hidden when it is not being used and get some better speakers.
Every wrong attempt discarded is a step forward - T. Edison
With the many technologies you'll want to employ (and some you haven't even conceived of yet) don't go hard wiring every room for what you think you'll need. Instead, run a 1 or 2 inch PVC pipe from the attic (or basement) into a square multi-use outlet on opposite walls in every room. Pop a blank plate over them and wait for the dust to settle. My first house, I hardwired everything, (Cat3 (in the day), cable, speakers, phone, security) only to discover that we moved the entire entertainment center/computer room to a different room in the house and swapped the living-room and den. My third house, I just ran PVC into outlets. After moving in, it was a simple matter of dropping wire where-ever I needed it, when I needed it (and it was a two-story). Good luck and have fun!
Everybody here is fixated on electronics, but in the spirit of lateral brainstorming consider pneumatic tubes... or at least a dumb-waiter between floors. If you only pull wire your wife will be asking why she can't teleport the car keys or a thermos of coffee from one room to another. With those cool vacuum tube thingies, all is possible; and they make a great noise. With straw bale you have plenty of room to stuff the tubes in between layers, and plenty of room for the corners which have to be large radius. Every year I see a company at CeBIT that still does the tube thing in amongst the routers and bit shufflers. Here's a list: http://www.thomasregisterdirectory.com/pneumatic_c omponents_equipment_products_systems/pneumatic_tub e_systems_0048012_1.html
I'm assuming you are already planning to have a tube to each room for central vaccuuming plant.
HAL 9000!!!
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
That's unbelieveable!
sup
If you have a basemenent and finish it, put in a hanging ceiling. It solves all sorts of 1st floor problems, such as adding electric or data outlets, moving plumbing around and (in my case) installing a wireless dog fence surrounding the kitchen.
Definitely install wall outlets near your Johns. If you want gadgets in your home, you should definitely have a gadget on your toilet. check out http://brondell.com/ ... they are selling a heated seat with water cleansing functionality. definitely needed for any hi-tech household.