killswtch's Home Automation and Media Projects
This is the story of my attempts at integrating various technologies into a 3-bed semi, constructing as much of the hardware and electronics as possible myself.
Wednesday 28 November 2007, 9:26 PM
Wiring the house
Before we moved into our new house, I lifted some of the carpets and floorboards and installed some runs of cat5 and speaker cable. In total there are 24 cat5 cables and 4 pairs of speaker cable. I’m not sure the length of network cable that was used, but a rough estimate is 400m - not quite as impressive as some other installations I’ve seen details of, but it’s a fair amount to pull on your own! I know exactly how much speaker cable was used though, because I used the whole reel - 100m.
At the time I wasn’t sure where the cables were going to terminate in my room (Node Zero), so I tried to leave plenty of slack. For most of the cables I’ve left more than enough for them to terminate in the newly constructed rack, but for the rest I may have to re-run or move the locations of the ports.
So far 5 pairs of ports have been installed - 3 pairs in the living room, 1 pair in the dining room and 1 pair on the landing. That leaves 7 pairs - 1 pair in the kitchen, 2 pairs in the master bedroom, 1 more pair in the dining room, 1 pair by the front door, 1 pair in the pantry and 1 pair in the third bedroom.
The wiring guide at Automated Home was a great help when it came to labelling the cables. The suggestion on that page is to use insulation tape of different colours to identify cables, much like the colour coding on a resistor. I had more than enough colours, so 2 bands were sufficient.
There have been a few challenges while running the cables. Some of the bricks in this house are extremely hard, enough so that it takes a lot of effort with a high-quality SDS drill to even drill holes for rawplugs. Some of the bricks are also engineer’s bricks, which render the cable finder useless. On the other end of the scale the ceiling plaster is lathe-and-plaster and is extremely fragile. While pulling the cables into the pantry, where they will run to the kitchen, front door and dining room, a large chunk of plaster god dislodged. This has sinced worsened with the vibrations from the staircase, and the entire ceiling in the pantry is slowly falling apart.
Horizontal runs of the cables currently go underneath the carpets. The ones that are attached to ports are protected by fixing cable channel (normally used when plastering over cables) in the hope of reducing the chance of cables becoming pinched by heavy weights. The runs on the landing (see below) are going to be re-run beneath the floorboards as part of the construction of an en-suite in the master bedroom.
After ordering the parts for the ports, I discovered that I could have used much shallower back-boxes if I had used 90 degree connectors instead of the 180 degree ones that I bought. Not a major problem since most of the ports aren’t visible, but it’s something to take note of if you plan on doing a similar project.
Like the other projects, this is a work in progress. More to come as the work progresses.
Tuesday 27 November 2007, 8:46 PM
Audio Distribution System - Phase 1 - The prototype
This project is intended to investigate the possibility of, and hopefully build if successful, a home-made externally-controllable matrix switcher with 8 inputs and 4 outputs using parts that cost a total of < £100 (excluding the external equipment such as amplifiers, speakers and cabling). The quality of the audio must be acceptable, but I'm not expecting it to be perfect - that's why the expensive matrix switchers exist. It just needs to serve the purposes of a small house.
There are many products on the market today to distribute audio around the house. They appear to fall into two categories: MP3 (and similar) wireless streamers targeted at consumers, and hard-wired matrix switchers aimed at professional installers. The former, while relatively cheap at £35-£250 per zone, is limited to playing pre-recorded audio encoded into one of it’s supported formats. These files must then (in most cases) be hosted on a suitable machine that they can be streamed from. The matrix switchers are significantly more expensive, and generally not available directly to consumers. These distribute actual audio signals from a number of inputs to a number of outputs, such that any one output can be connected to any one of the inputs, and outputs can share the same input connection.
Initially the switcher will be connected via a parallel port to a host computer, which will run a dumb network server to relay commands from controllers around the house. The controllers will run some custom-written software (most probably as a web application).Inputs will most probably consist of some of the TVs around the house, plus the DAB radio in the kitchen and a computer to play MP3 and other audio files.
The prototype has been built, and it will soon be plugged into an ATX power supply and brought to life - hopefuly without any accompanying burning smells! The ICs aren’t cheap nor easily obtainable, so if it goes wrong it’ll be a bit of a setback. The prototype mainly exists to test that the audio signal does not degrade significantly as more outputs are added to one input, and that the multiplexer ICs can reliably reproduce a line-level signal.
More details will be posted as this project progresses. Here are some photos of the prototype and amplifier to tide you over.
Tuesday 27 November 2007, 6:46 PM
My 19" Rack - Phase 7 - Adding the front doors
The front doors were constructed from 18mm MDF and veneered with ash. Acrylic glass sheets allow direct viewing of the equipment within, whilst keeping the noise contained and the hardware secure.
Tuesday 27 November 2007, 6:44 PM
My 19" Rack - Phase 6 - Adding the side panels
3mm MDF was used for the side panels. Originally it was intended that the panels be much thicker and stronger to allow direct mounting of equipment (e.g. an LCD or Plasma display) to the sides, but this would have added significant weight to what was already quite a heavy structure.
Monday 26 November 2007, 9:29 PM
My 19" Rack - Phase 5 - Painting
Matt black blackboard paint was used for the frame, base and rear doors. 2 coats was enough to give a good finish.
More photos of this project can be found at http://gallery.killswtch.net/main.php?g2_itemId=203 and my main blog is at http://www.killswtch.net/
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