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Ask Slashdot: Ideas For a Geek Remodel?
An anonymous reader writes "What would you do to 'go geek' if you had a major remodel on your hands? My wife and I are re-modeling my in-law's 3000 sq foot single-level house, and we're both very wired, tech-savvy individuals. We will both have offices, as well as TVs in the bedroom and dining room. My question to the community is: What would you do if you had 10-20,000 to spend for this kind of remodel project? What kind of hardware/firmware would you install? I'd love to have a digital 'command center' to run an LCD wall-calendar for the family, and be able to play my PS3 from anywhere in the house (ie, if everyone wants to watch Netflix while I'm in the middle of some Borderlands). What else have geeks done/planned to do? This is a test run for a much, much nicer house down the road, so don't be overly afraid of cost concerns for really great ideas. We will be taking most of the house down to studs, so don't factor demolition into costs. For culinary-minded geeks, I'd love any ideas you have to surprise my wife with cool kitchen gadgets or designs."
Invest in a good voice recognition system and write some regexes that will detect your name in various contexts and alert you if they are leaving their house to come over to yours.
Star Trek living-room.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
The #1 thing I've always wanted to do is put the whole entertainment system behind glass and give it muffled fans and intake filters. I'd really like to eliminate every little bit of noise finally, even the TV has a hum to it. And then there's the dust, which could be all but eliminated by using the right materials for building the enclosure, and the use of the aforementioned filters. I'd give it its own system for control of temp and humidity too, since that's relatively easy if you have all the other parts.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
As a general contractor, assuming you are doing things(paint, flooring, maybe light fixtures and blinds) to the entire 3000 sq ft, your budget that remains purely for tech is going to be approximately zero. Its doubtful that budget would even allow for much of a kitchen/bath update depending on what part of the country you are in.
If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
Lots and lots of Ethernet ports. Wireless is insufficient for the True Geek.
I don't respond to AC's.
As soon as we moved into our new house I replaced all the switches with an Insteon system and an ISY-99 controller. I absolutely love it. Being able to turn off all the lights in the house from the bedroom is great. I can put the kids lights on timers, see if any lights are on, have the sprinkler system turn on per water need (connected to weatherbug), setback the thermostat automatically when we leave the house, have a night kitchen run scene, etc....
A DIY friendly system and the programming language on the ISY is easy to use and quite flexible.
I have been very happy and wish I had done it on the old house.
#2 favorite thing (actually probably #1 but it is not really a remodel item) is a whole house Sonos system. The perfect audio sync and ease of listening to anything anywhere in the house is great. I used to be a developer for GiantDisc (which still has the best cataloging system available anywhere) but the Sonos ease of use and perfect audio sync won me over.
Since you've asked for a true geek solution it is necessary to get out of that immobile structure with it's permanent address and accompanying tethers to "the man". Get yourselves into a geek-pimped Class A motorhome so that you can live off the grid as much as possible. A strict observance of anti-surveillance protocols will be a must, including burner phones. Keep them guessing which Wal-Mart you'll camp in next, and have fun wardriving. Field-strip your gear regularly and don't leave anything behind anywhere. Destroy this message. Good luck.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
I know that you said this in the abstract, but I'd really avoid having a TV in the dining room if I were you. Not to sound too much like a 1950's stereotype, dining is a social occasion, and dining together is a good time to talk. Have a TV in your office/den and if you're having a lazy lunch etc, take the food there, but try to have a clear space to have dinner together and you'll find it really encourages conversations.
Am I the only one scratching my head on this? Are they doing this for his in-laws? Why would they both have offices at her parents house? Is it their house now? Why call it her parents? Did they not pay for it?
Put a digital clock in each room, call it a day, and invest the money in a high yield bond, until you can afford your own home.
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
It's a matter of personal taste, of course, but I'd keep the TV out of the dining room and spend the money on something else. You need a place to get away from information overload.
We've declared our dining room to be a screen-free zone-- no TV's, laptops, iPads, smartphones, whatever. It's the one room in the house where we sit, eat, and converse as a family.
I find the half hour or so when people aren't checking Facebook, tweeting, playing minecraft, checking their calendar, etc to be pretty refreshing. It's amazing what you can find out when you ask a kid how their day was.
3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
Layout and work flow are key to a great kitchen. Fridges that have cat5 and lcd screens are essentially toys. Spend your money on quality cookware and utensils that are commercial grade. ...not a cheap toaster oven.
Think about little things like;
how do I cool stuff down efficiently,
what is the best convection equipment that I can afford.
Where do I rinse vegetables?
Is there filtered water and how well can I clean oversized pots. A pot sink is a better alternative to a double shallow!
Get a small commercial salamander oven that can top brown
Don't spend your money on toys!
Above all set it up so that more than one person can work in the kitchen at a time without having to worry too much about stabbing each other! Your wife will love you for that much more that all the geek toys you can stuff into a kitchen now a days.
Sure put a sit down bar away from the prep area where you can have a laptop or whatever and put sound in the kitchen but by and large all this is secondary to a well thought out design and quality equipment!
I am a cook and know what really matters in food preparation.
Also a proper venting range hood. It's amazing how few houses have this simple thing anymore.
I'd put some big conduit and wiring ducts across the house, with drops in every room. This way you can pull whatever cables, fiber, etc. you need.
Why are you remodeling someone elses house?
I would have easily removable wainscotting for access to the walls, and lots of conduit allowing whatever room-to-room connections I might need later. I'd model it on hospital setups, but go cheaper:I'd use luann paneling for the wainscotting, for example.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Since you're going down to the studs anyway, find some place to put in a simple secret passageway. You know, for the kids and grandkids.
Look for dead spaces in the walls. It can be as simple as going from one closet to another. Try to connect to the crawlspace, maybe.
In light of the approaching hurricane, and during heavy rain in general, I like to make sure my sump pump is keeping up (I live in an older house). Rather than continually going down to check on it, I installed a WiFi IP Camera in the room pointed at the pump. That way I can check on it periodically from my phone without actually going in there. Of course, infra-red LEDs are a must on such a setup, but they come with most cameras anyway. To generalize, cameras wherever you might want to monitor the state of the house. This would be separate from security cameras.
"I know that every word that man just said is true, because it's EXACTLY what I wanted to hear." -- Space Ghost