RE: Medieval Home Automation

["Andrew Richards" <andrew.richards@xxxxxxx>]

Mark

Thanks for the prompt feedback.  Some questions in turn:

- a quick look in the Farnell cat didn't show a Cat5e cable - it either
seems to be 5 or 6.  Where's the best place to get Cat5e cable and
accessories?  What additional headroom does this give me?

- I'll need to do some more research on this voice business.  Any good
tutorial sites on compressors/noise gates?  Great idea on the noise
cancellation approach.  Just need to make it work now!

- UFH is separately zoned, so we are OK there :-)

- the issue I have with IR is how to keep it contained.  I don't want one
person adjusting the volume on their amp and it simultaneously adjusting
the
volume of every other room amp that is the same make!  Ideally, the PC
should route IR signals only to the equipment that has been allocated to
that room.   Not really all that difficult in theory, but would be nice to
know if anybody's been there before

- central vacuum - interesting.  Looked at it and wasn't really convinced
before, and structure now done so 'difficult'!

- 5a (round pin) sockets - I know what you mean, but ideally I don't want
to
re-plug dimmable appliances (ie lamps) as they are then less useable
elsewhere.  Instead, I'm protecting the circuit by putting a 2A MCB on it.
But as you say, in 10 years time and with wombles about . . .

- don't understand your point re BT analogue lines - why are they inferior
to the analogue lines over HH?

- CAT5 - OK, I'll up the quantity!

- garden - yes, I agree; will include

Thanks again

Andrew




-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Harrison [mailto:Mark.Harrison@xxxxxxx]
Sent: 07 December 2001 18:08
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Subject: RE: [ukha_d] Medieval Home Automation


Andrew,

A few points (apart from "well done :-) "), in no particular
order


- I understand exactly why you're doing this. Ever since the first time
I walked into _that_ building at the Weald and Downand museum, I wanted
one ;-)

- CAT5 should probably be to the CAT5e standard rather than basic CAT5

- In addition to the wiring runs, I would also lay ducting runs with
several runs of string in, allowing you to subsequnetly "pull
through"
whatever type of cable we all decide to use in 5 years time (optical
fibre, maybe).

- On the whole house voice control, you may find you are better served
with some kind of compressor or noise gate BETWEEN the mixer and the PC,
rather than relying on the PC to handle recognition.

- Underfloor heating - make sure that each zone is separately
controllable (even if all you do one day one is put a separate valve
onto each.) In a house the size you're talking about, I would have
thought that 12-16 zones would be about right.

-  I believe (emotionally that is, rather than because I've seen any
evidence) that in a multi-room audio set up including voice control
through ceiling/wall mounted microphones, that one should be able to
feed a copy of the main audio signal, BOTH INVERTED AND DELAYED to the
mixer as a "noise cancellation" device. This would take a lot of
empirical buggering about with to tune, but should lead to better voice
pickup when music is playing.

- IR distribution. Watch Keith Doxey carefully over the next few months
:-)

- Central vacuum cleaner? I wasn't sure till I used one at a friend's
house in Canada. Now I'm sure!

- If you are dimming sockets at the "back end" (ie not by a
module
plugged into them) then they should NOT be normal 13a sockets. Instead
they should be the "small, round-pin" style. This makes it easy
to
identify them, and stops some womble plugging a telly into a half-dimmed
socket and blowing the tube 10 years down the line.

- Telephone. Just take the ISDN to the Node zero first, then distribute
it to whatever rooms you need to over your structured wiring. ISDN lends
itself to this very well.

- On the "2 analogue lines" - make sure that they come in as 2
analogue
channels on an ISDN installation, not as traditional analogue lines from
BT!

AND MOST IMPORTANTLY......

- It is impossible to overstate how much you will use CAT5 once you have
it installed. There are more applications each day! As such, put 4 point
into every corner of evey room PLUS 2 points for every 1 you believe you
have a use for based on your imagined equipment layout.


Mark Harrison
Head of Systems, eKingfisher


-----Original Message-----
From: Andrew Richards [mailto:andrew.richards@xxxxxxx]
Sent: 7 December 2001 17:47
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Cc: comfort-technical@xxxxxxx
Subject: [ukha_d] Medieval Home Automation


Hi to all

I've been an avid lurker on the UKHA and Comfort groups for a few months
now, picking up lots of useful tips.

We are in the process of doing the self-build of a large medieval house,
and
I've completed the first draft of a schematic and a design document for
whole-house automation.  I'd really welcome some peer review,
particularly
on the cabling proposed, as I'm about to start 1st fix on one part of
the
house.

The document is in Word format at the moment on the Files section of the
UKHA group (its around a 250k download).  The original schematic
diagrams
were drawn in Turbocad, and cut and paste doesn't always seem to give
the
right result (I can't get it to print the diagrams).  If you prefer (and
can
wait for the 'page' to load), then you can go to
www.progcons.co.uk/hav1.htm
and get the full document - my apologies, it's just a Word dump to html.
Better web structure to follow.

Happy reading: all feedback gratefully received.

Andrew

Kent, UK



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