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

worry about energy costs first

[bluGill]

Maybe you already are, but just in case (and for those who are considering this): consider energy costs first.

Smart homes seems like a neat idea, but what is the gain over just putting a stereo in each room, and a wi-fi receiver for those rooms where you really want mp3s? (As long as you need to remove the inside walls anyway you may as well run CAT-5, but for most people wi-fi works well)

Spend your budget first on low-E windows, and good insulation. Then put in a good heating/cooling system (preferably a ground source heat pump).

Saving energy will make the world a better place, and in the long run is good for your wallet. Your 'smart home' is not very smart if it wastes energy, and at best won't make the world a better place.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against the idea. I'm just urging you to take care of the important parts first, then the toys. I also encourage you to think about the toys. If you don't have a radio of some sort in your current bathroom, why put one in.

Re:only worry about infrastructure now

[BoomerSooner]

Are you kidding me? 1 socket on each stud? Do you realize studs are 18" apart which in a 10x10 room means you have around 26 plugs? WTF would someone need that for? Not to mention copper is f'ing expensive. Go to lowes or home depot and look at how much copper wiring costs.

BTW I build homes for a living.

Re:Why?

[JabberWokky]

Heh. You'd be surprised. Check out science.slashdot.org, and the level leaps up -- at least for the stories that *don't* get posted to the home page. In fact, if a story does not get posted to the home page, it's very likely people in the discussion are actual experts.

I do note that most topics on Ask Slashdot (anything you'd either hire an expensive expert for, or can only be figured out by doing serious book reading research) get useless replies. Also anything with competition - if you say "What's a good way to do foo with Perl?", you'll get 50 answers on how to do it with PHP, 170 with Ruby, 7 in emacs, and 1 in either Intercal or Ada. And zero useful answers.

Incidently, if you actually want to use Ask Slashdot as a resource, there is a way: bookmark the discussion, wait a week or two, and then go back through it looking for links or references. A few people have likely posted a link or three to really nicely complete sites or cited a (gasp!) book that is nice. Watch for names to pick out too; you can find actual experts on the subject that people mention in their post.

--
Evan