Creating a Clever Home?

eKto1 asks: "We've recently purchased an older, dated home which we are in the process of gutting and restructuring. While there are no walls, we are obviously running the standard Cat5, and speaker cable to each and every room, however we would also like to modernize the house even more by making it intelligent, as in 'Smart'. I'd like to install touch screens in the majority of the rooms, to control things such as media (separate audio and video to each wall unit), lighting, temperature, etc. For those of you on Slashdot who have done this, what has your experience been? Are there guides for doing this easily and effectively, without having to sell the farm? Is there a way to allow distributed content to head units while keeping servers down to one or 2 units?"

Comments

only worry about infrastructure now

[bmwm3nut]

this is a project that should be done it at least two steps. the only thing you really want to worry about now is getting the wires into the walls. so plan on things like (as you say) cat-5 (i suggest cat-6 incase gigabit become affordable in the future), speaker wire, and don't forget enough electrical sockets. i honestly don't think it's too much to ask for one electrical socket on each stud. make sure they're on different circuit breakers, and if possible maybe set up some of them to be uninterruptable. my ideal wall would have a socket on each stud. 2 out of every three would be regular sockets - but on different circuits, and 1 out of three would be on an uninterruptable circuit that's managed elsewhere in the house. you could even look into the new standard 12VDC power that's starting to be popular for some lightning. it wouldnt hurt to put a line of 12VDC in the wall too.

once you have all the wires in the wall, then you can worry about hardware. the nice thing is that you don't need to worry about it now. you can just put in a cheap thermostat now and later when you say, "hey, i'd like to control the thermostat with my webserver" you can then put in a new thermostat and you'll already have the wires in the wall and you can set up the webserver to control the thermostat. likewise with anything else, you can add touch screens later. the benefit to going with normal stuff now and upgrading later is that it forces you to think modularly. if you put in touch screens now and set everything up with those screens, you'll probably be mad next year when newer less buggy hardware is out there and it's impossible for you to upgrade. if you think modularly, then you can upgrade the hardware however you want.

the same goes for your server room. don't worry now about how many servers it's going to take to run your house. just make sure you have a room wired properly that you can put servers in. then when you start putting more services online and you need more computing power, it'll be easy to upgrade as necessary. for example after you get bored having the lights and heat controlled by the computers, you can later upgrade and write your own security system that monitors the windows and doors at night. if some one breaks in, it'll wake you up, auto dial 911, automatically unlock the gun cabinet and give you a lighted path from your bed to the gun cabinet (or at least that's my dream for my comptuer controlled house).

Re:don't use Microsoft Windows. But use Doors.

[MindStalker]

HAHA, that video was funny. Only in Japan I guess. I would never imagine creating a marketing video when my product half works. Watch it, many of the slits don't go far enough, and it seems like once they do move, they won't go farther if nessesary to accomidate. As well the sensors should have a wider range, as the tops of peoples heads didn't always trigger the sensor for the slit that you would bump your head into if you actually used it. Cool, but this thing would quickly get destroyed in real usage. I guess in Japan people are willing to work around technology like that and duck.

Re:Conduit

[wowbagger]

You forgot to tie another string onto the first, so that when you are done, you have both the new cable, and a string in the conduit.

ALWAYS pull a second string.

Account for time

[knightPhlight]

I do high end low voltage installations for a living. And while most of the hardware is insanely expensive, the same results can be achieved with commondity equipment and open source solutions.

That being said, pre-wiring is the most important aspect of what you will be doing. Depending on your budget you will want to wire CAT5 (or 6e) into all light switch and telephone locations. At a minimum you will need CAT5 to every video location.

Wireless technology is too dependant on outside factors to be reliable. Good old copper gets the 1s and 0s to the correct place much more efficently. Plus, if it's called for, power over ethernet doesn't work very well wirelessly :) CAT5 isn't just for bits and bytes any more. It works great for remote thermostat sensors, infrared transmission, etc..

While we install touch panels by AMX Corp. the same thing can be done with a cheap touch overlay'ed display, PXE, and VNC. I would recommend staying away from X10 products. If you don't want to spend the time to write your own control software, the NetLinx programming language (used on AMX products) is easier than learning QBasic. Some of their controllers show up on Ebay for reasonable amounts.

The single most preventative aspect of this project is the amount of time involved. We will spend months in design, prewire, install, and programming on even relatively small systems. But if your wiring is not in place, no amount of time spent will be as productive.

Re:Conduit

[austad]

Note that this is illegal according to most building codes in the US. This is because it can allow a fire to spread through the home faster either because of increased oxygen supply or because it offers a pathway for hot gases to travel to other portions of the house.

I looked into doing this, and the building inspector said no way in hell would he approve it.