Slashdot Mirror
What Would Be Your Ideal Futuristic Home?
deman1985 asks: "As the owner of a small commercial and home integration company, I'm exposed to a wide variety of customers with differing tastes and needs. I'll get requests for anything from the ordinary audio distribution systems and full home theater systems, to downright bizarre requests like having bubble baths run automatically, when they walk in the door. However, the vast majority of customers I encounter are not technologically inclined and are more interested in simplicity rather than impressiveness. What would your ideal integrated home look like? What's the most unique feature you would like to see? If you had access to an unlimited budget, what would you spend money on to make your home stand out? Whole-house audio? Hidden video screens? Automatic locks? Do most people view home integration strictly as a toy for entertainment, or is the technology ready for prime time?"
I love technology. My family has several laptops, desktops and we run a few servers as well. We have gadgets. But the thing about it all that bothers me, is that it is all dependent on the precarious infrastructure for power and telecom. I would love to have solar and wind power backup. I'd love to have redundant methods of communication, even going back to low-tech/old-tech radio systems. I'd also like to have local caches of reference materials such as wikipedia, about.com, CIA world factbook, etc. I'm not a survivalist freak, but I do find it painful when the power goes out for a few days at a time! It'd be nice to have some basic backups!
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
I'd want a small home(1,500 - 2,000 sq.ft.) on plenty of land (4+ acres) with trees. The only electronics I'd want is something that blocks anything wireless so I can have some peace and quiet for once. Also, I'd have an excuse for why I wasn't pestered by any phone calls...I mean, why I didn't get someone's call.
Saturday is April 1. Slashdot will be shut down. Sorry for the inconvenience.
What happens when you ask a bunch of nerds and engineers to collaborate on a home design? You get the DUH: Dilbert Ultimate House (Professional Edition).
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Ideal home integration? ... probably could do with a bit less.
Simplicity. Japanese style furniture, and few and selected furniture, and the stereos, hifi, etc would be simplistic as well. No TV - possibly a projector. Ideally Bose but any small and good sounding speakers, integrated with iPod. Integration with Airport Express should be easy - so can control the musics of all the rooms of the house by the computers (a few in different rooms or where needed).
Actually, for TV needs now the computers do fine - mostly viewing movies anyway, and some cartoons with eyeTV.
Lots of small lights in ceiling and on walls to get enough light on winter, and enough analog candles for the mood.
And simple materials to keep it all timeless - such as white walls, dark wood, some stone, some metal, and selected details in bright colors.
And the simplicity factor will make it more simple than now - there are 16 iPods in our house now
I wouldn't want a complete turn-key solution, I'd want to have the infrastructure in place so that I could tinker as I chose.
My new house would have a wiring closet/server room that would be the electronic equivalent of the furnace/AC/water heater room. There would be racks and/or cabinets for various computers and A/V equipment. The room would be properly ventilated. The house would be wired to hell and back before walls went up.
Then leave me to my devices. I'll handle the rest!
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
A touch screen near the door that allowed me to walk in, and pick from a simple list of pre-programmed profiles for lights, music, and TV.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Oooo, I think I'm on to something here!
There was this builder on NPR a year ago. He builds house in Athens, GA. He figured out that if he left as many trees as he could on a property, he could sell the house for a premium. I just thought - "Uh, Duh!" Most GA builders just clear cut everything and plant weeds (i.e.a lawn).
Saturday is April 1. Slashdot will be shut down. Sorry for the inconvenience.
I'd like my home to be a 1:1 scale mock-up of a Firefly class transport. But then I'm a nerd...
It's sad when choosing an installation directory on your own qualifies you as an "advanced user."
That way should I not like my neighborhood, I can move to a new one.
That and live like the turtles, taking my house with me as I visit places across the sea.
Considering that the first things I did when I moved into my house were to build a movie theater in the attic and wire the whole house for audio, video, and Internet, I'm definitely in your target market ;-).
Here are the things I would love to have but am too lazy to have actually gotten around to:
The ability to wirelessly stream TV from any of my DVRs to any of my laptops.
Ringing the doorbell should automatically pause any television, movies, or music playing and bring up the front (or side) door-cam
Similarly, video and audio should pause when the phone rings.
Be able to use any device in my house as the source for my whole-house audio-video system (currently only the devices in my living room system can function as sources).
I want a security system that allows me to check the status of my house (hopefully including seeing pictures) from an internet connection. I travel a lot, and it would make me feel better to be able to see that everything is okay.
And some general comments:
After playing around with a bunch of universal remotes, I can categorically state that the Home Theater Master MX-850 (Aeros) is my favorite. I have played with a bunch of high-end touchscreens like Crestrons, and actually have a HTM MX-3000 for my theater, but I find that the "wow!" factor is offset by the day-to-day reality that hard-buttoned remotes are easier to live with.
I don't give a rats' ass about having video screens hidden. I paid a lot of money for my plasma screens, and I'm perfectly okay with having people able to see them. However, while I don't want to hide them, I am perfectly okay with disguising them. I would love to have my main plasma framed so that it looked like a painting on the wall, and I think the ones that look like mirrors when they are off are awesome as well.
I do like to have video in unusual places. I have a high-def TV mounted over the master bathtub which can receive audio and video from the whole-house network. We don't use it very often, but it's great for escaping from reality for a little while. Similarly, I would like to eventually have a weatherproof TV mounted next to my hot tub.
I guess basically the bottom line is that I want to be able to get my video and audio from any device to any device easily. I am unfortunately very busy, and really don't have a lot of time to watch TV or movies -- so being able to fire up a recorded copy "The Simpsons" on my laptop (without the bother of downloading a torrent or ripping a DVD) would make it easier for me to enjoy those few minutes I do have.
Now, that said, I have no intention of actually work with a company like yours. I mean no offense, but in my experience, installation companies like to choose absolutely ridiculously expensive equipment and spend far too much time trying to maximize their profits. The simple fact is that in many cases white paint (cost: $20) provides a projection surface superior to even the much-vaunted Stewart Firehawk (cost: $thousands), and yet I don't think there is a theater company in the world that would actually admit that.
My screen (160" with an Infocus 7205) is white paint. Sherwin Williams Ultrapaint, to be precise. It looks like a real screen, because I have the projection surface framed off with duvetyne tape and the rest of the wall painted dark blue, and I have had very knowledgeable people comment that it's the best image they have ever seen. And it's just white paint. Similarly, my DVD player cost me $50. The output is completely and utterly indistinguishable from a $1500 Denon (and yes, we have run blind tests -- nobody could tell the difference). So I'm very jaded about the home theater industry in general.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
I want a futuristic home that pays its own property taxes. that way i can live in it forever.
As EVERY good geek shold know Alton Brown shold design the kitchen to be mulitasked, and well hacked.
My plan when I went looking for the place I eventually bought was to make sure the bedroom was empty. Have a rectangular room a big wooden four-pster bed in it and nothing else.
Real life interfered a lot, so I have to have clothes, books, and even a computer desk in there at the moment - but one day I will own a house which has a room which is literally just a bed-room.
Perfect for reading/cuddling/relaxing in. With nothing to distract or tidy.
Realtor: This is the Hot Chicks Room. The breakfast table's just over this way...
Wife: Excuse me? What was that room again?
Realtor: Oh, this is the Hot Chicks Room. It's filled with assorted hot chicks, who party in here 24 hours a day. But you'd be more interested in the kitchen.
Wife: You know what? We're not going to need a sexy chicks room.
Realtor: Well, actually it's a Hot Chicks Room.
Wife: Well, whatever it is, we don't need it.
Husband: You said the same thing about the microwave, and we use that darned thing all the time.
[to realtor]
Husband: So, a Hot Chicks Room, huh?
Realtor: Yeah. The previous owner installed the room in the 80's, and I'll be honest with you, some of the chicks aren't all that hot anymore. However, they are replacable.
1) you always grow out of your home until you have kids and they leave for college.
2) home values go up, mostly.
so, buy the biggest house you can afford, a little ways from the edge of surberbia. You will grow into it, and you will make more money over the long run.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
All this rock moving required years of heavy equipment operations. The construction site looked like a mall was going in. All this rock had to be not only placed, but anchored; the house is near the San Andreas fault.
The house is on Mountain Home Road in Woodside, recognizable by the gatehouse that looks like a Japanese teahouse. In the end, it looks rather modest; it just has a landscape that belongs to a rockier area.
So that's a real dream house, built for someone with a mania for big rocks.
I'm just a geek, not a home-automation expert, but the house I've been designing (for when I'm rich and/or famous) will have quite a bit of (in my opinion) useful automation (In no particular order):
... And so it comes to this.
Exactly! I attended a speech here not to long ago by someone who had built their own earthship. Essentially the idea is to pack sand in tires for thick mass around 3 walls and then face the sun with a wall of windows and the house regulates its own temperatures. They built their home (somewhere in the 2000-3000 sqrft size range) for $40,000 CDN. The house regulates its own temperature from outdoor conditions of -40C to +30C here in Ontario. They use a composting toilet, well water with a waste water system using plants, woodstove and solar power (including computers). For $40k (they say they could do it for $30K knowing what they know now) they are completely off the grid and as a bonus financially independent other than property taxes. As an interesting aside in some municipalities your property taxes are based on the amount of greenspace your house takes up and since the roof of the house is actually earth and grass you loose no greenspace....
Anyway, this my new dream home. As it is completely self-sufficient, low cost, and there have been many projects to show that you don't have to sacrifice luxery (including running many computers and HDTVs and the like) when living in this sort of home. About the only trouble seems to be getting building permits (did I meantion they are certified earthquake safe in california?) Many of them are very gorgeous as well. I would recommend checking out earthship.org for examples.
The house of tomorrow looks an awful lot like the house of yesterday. I'm a homeowner, so I can pass along some of my own observations about how I would change my house if I had the chance:
1. Insulate, insulate, insulate. You can never insulate too well. Even if you think you've insulated well enough for thermal control, extra insulation is also sound deadening, which is nice. While you're at it, seal up the house really well. BUT if you do that, make sure you install a heat-exchanger venting system to replace the house air. This isn't so much a health issue as much as it is an aesthetic one. When you drop a deuce in the master bath, a well sealed house will help make the, uh, memories linger unless you are changing out the air. And leaving the bathroom window open on a cold, rainy night is never a great plan.
2. Put the laundry "room" (alcove, closet, whatever) near the master bedroom. It takes some extra work and some extra space, but you'll thank me. Especially if you have a two story house. You didn't install the dishwasher in the garage, did you?
3. Nice big conduits to every room for low voltage / communications wiring. Yes, for today I want 2 cat 5 and 2 RG6, but what about tomorrow?
4. Oversize the utility inputs as much as you can. We swapped out our stove/oven for a gas model. This required bringing a second gas line in through the garage - a fairly ugly hack. It would have been much better to future-proof this up front.
5. Tankless water heater. More reliable and longer lasting, more energy efficient, more graceful failure mode. Who can argue with that?
6. A basement. Obviously in some places this is actually required to insure the foundation is below the frost line, but even in Silicon Valley I'd like to have one for storage and to make repairs and improvements easier. We have a crawl space. It's not so nice. If you have a basement and a single story, then you probably can strike out #3 above.
7. Attic stairs / finished attic. The trend nowadays in making your house bigger is to replace the attic with a 2nd story. The 2nd story winds up with rooms with angled ceilings and the like, and you don't get to have an attic at all. We don't have a big family, so we don't really need that. But we are storage-poor, so it would be really helpful to be able to conveniently use the giant, cavernous triangle above the ceiling to store stuff.
8. If you go with 2 stories, try and arrange to have a pair of closets vertically lined up. If your health declines as you get older (a house is a long term investment, mind you), you can convert them into an elevator.
9. Every (non Amish) modern house in America has a home theater. The only difference is how nice it is. A 23" TV in the den is the home theater if that's where you watch TV. I'm not saying you should plan your house around home theater, but if you know some of the rules of good theater design, you can decide how many of them you can try and incorporate in the place where the TV goes:
A. Sunlight is the enemy of your TV. The room doesn't have to be windowless, but try and avoid large picture windows facing West or South.
B. The distance between the screen and your eyes ideally should be about 2-3 times the height of the screen (at least, if we're talking about high definition TV. Sit further away, and you'll lose all of the extra detail you paid for when you bought an HD set).
10. Let nature help your HVAC situation. Plant deciduous trees to the south. In the summer, they'll shade the house. In the winter, they'll drop their leaves and let the sun through to warm you. Plant evergreens between your house and the prevailing winter wind (usually from the North).
Self cleaning.
I don't really care about details of how it's accomplished. Nano-treated surfaces and micro-robots? Sweet, whatever. Just so long as I never have to clean the tub or mop the kitchen by hand again.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.