In one of my earliest posts, I outlined my pre-wire, which consisted mainly of Cat6 cabling, some RG6QS (Coax) for Satellite receivers, and audio for a distributed audio system. There was no pre-wired video distribution system as HDMI was impractical for long runs and likely way too expensive to wire everywhere anyway. Technology has changed that a bit.

This one could probably be filed under 'unnecessary' or maybe just 'dumb' but I did it anyway. Initially, I was very proud of myself for having all of the home's low-voltage wiring pulled into a couple of structured wiring enclosures and terminated into a patch panel. It worked great and made management of things a lot easier (see my earlier post on this topic).

At this point, there's a lot of little bits of tech in my house, and a lot of it is tied together doing cool or useful things. You may have noticed in my IP Camera posts that one of my cameras is focused on the front door. It's handy for checking for packages, and will have a record if anyone steals one. But I also thought it would be handy for checking who's at the door when the doorbell rings. Getting out your phone, opening the app, and finally checking is a little awkward to do while someone is waiting at your door.

In my original lighting post, I covered a lot of the different available technologies and why I chose Insteon. Over the last couple of years as I grew the system, my outlook changed slightly.

In the time since I first installed my IP Cameras, I've made a few changes. Mainly the changes are in the number of cameras and type of cameras.

Although I have already written a couple of posts outlining how I wrote a couple of plugins to integrate my pool system and whole house audio system to Indigo, which is my main automation controller. However, I didn't touch on how to actually connect them to the computer.

In my last post, I outlined the process of writing my own plugin to integrate my pool system to the rest of the automation system. Well, it turns out I'd like to do the same with my whole house audio system.

I outlined in the Control Software post that Indigo now has the ability to use plugins to extend its control and functionality. Additionally, those plugins can be user written. Some users had already written plugins to integrate with some things in my house (Elk M1G alarm, for example) but it was becoming clear that for some things I was going to need to figure out how to write my own plugins.

Before building the new home, I had a package delivered to my front step (so the tracking information said) but I never got the package. The impact was no big deal, since the vendor I purchased from just sent a replacement, but it bothered me a lot, and I knew that if there was a small camera on the front step, I'd see either who took the package, or if it was never delivered at all.

When the house was built, it was also wired for an alarm and had an alarm system installed. This was a perfectly capable GE Concord system, but there were still a few reasons to replace it.

I bought a TV cabinet for our living room that conceals the TV when not in use and has a mechanical lift operated by remote control that can raise it when you want to watch TV. Unfortunately, I didn't realize when ordering this cabinet that the remote control is RF, not IR and so can't be added to my universal remote to control it. There is no universal remote that can operate RF equipment or even any kind of IR to RF converter available that I could find, so an alternate solution was needed.

Thermostats are a pretty attractive area to enable home automation. At the most basic level, a lot of people might want to schedule their air conditioning to turn down while they're out of the house during the day before cooling it off again in the evening in order to save energy. At the next level though, you may want to be able to just manually turn your thermostat up or down from your seat on the couch via your phone, or even monitor and adjust the temperature remotely.

After installing automated light switches, some simple things like linking switches together or creating some scenes for different events can be done with no additional hardware. However, in order to do more advanced things with schedules, conditions and the like it became clear that a centralized controller would be the way to go.

I think whenever anyone mentions home automation, automated lighting usually comes to mind right away. I definitely wanted the ability to have lights come on and off at pre-determined times, or follow some other logic along with some other things. However, there are many, many solutions for automated lighting, all with different advantages and disadvantages.

In the last post I mentioned that I was using a projector zoom for my CIH screen, and that it was as simple as pushing a button to change lens memory on the projector. Well... that wasn't entirely true.

The most obvious feature of most dedicated media rooms is a large screen with an overhead projector supplying the picture. I spent a lot of time doing research on all of the things covered on this site, but the projector and screen setup HAD to be where I spent the most time. There are a lot of factors that come into play with projector and screen choice, and I wanted to make sure I was able to get the most I possibly could for the lowest price possible. One of the best resources I found was Projector Central. This site has a lot of eductional material to help you realize what projector you need or want. There's also a pretty comprehensive list of available projectors, along with their specs, and an awesome calculator to help you with projector and screen sizing and distances.

In the audio pre-wire post I concluded with a description of how 25 wires from the home audio systems were brought to the head end and left accessible through a single 2-gang junction box. Although It is likely acceptable to just pull the wires out the hole in the wall (they'll certainly fit) if you've been following along this far, you'd realize that doesn't really match the level of neatness and organization we've done with the rest of the wiring so far.

While running Cat6 and RG6 cable around the house, we also decided to pre-wire for a whole-home audio setup. My prior home had speakers installed in several rooms and I really enjoyed being able to listen to music around the house and in the backyard, so we added a similar setup in the new house. There are enough interesting details around the audio pre-wire that I decided to address it seperately from the Cat5 and RG6 pre-wire.

Years ago in some home I saw someone whose stereo equipment rack was on an exterior wall (or exterior to the attic at least). The rear of the rack was then easily reachable by going into the attic and opening a small panel door that was installed on the backside of this rack. Given how difficult it is to plug in the countless wires in the back of any modern AV receiver, the genius in this is not hard to see.

Once we moved in, it was time to start trimming out the pre-wire. The builder does at least part of this for you. All of the Cat6 and RG6 jacks on the walls are already connected and in place. The other ends of those wires, however are just dumped into the structured wiring enclosure, but are finished with the appropriate connectors.

This is probably the most important stage if you’re building a new house. Before the drywall goes up, it’s easy to add wires. After it goes up... not so much.