Most wife-friendly use of HA?

["Mark Harrison \(Yahoo!\)" <mph@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Yup - it's that thread which comes round about once every 18 months :-)

What is the most wife-friendly use of HA that you've come up with?

My starter for 10 - the "master bedroom suite audio extension",
as follows:

THE PROBLEM

I have a master bedroom "suite", consisting of bedroom, shower
room, and adjacent single bedroom used as dressing room...

In the bedroom, I have a big hifi. Historically, the way to get sound
throughout the bedroom suite was to turn up the volume. To turn it up loud
enough so I could listen when in the shower meant it was turned up too
loudly for comfortable occupancy of the bedroom. (ie - Mrs. H. couldn't
sleep through it).

It was acceptable that the shower room receive music whenever the bedroom
did, but it was NOT acceptable to have the hifi in the dressing room
whenever the main room is, because it is occassionally used as "guest
bedroom 3".

THE SOLUTION

Two parts.

In the en-suite shower, I now have a ceiling speaker. This is driven off an
extra power amp in the main bedroom. The speaker is wired back to a pair of
speaker terminals fitted into the wall, and I use a short speaker cable as
a "patch lead" between the rear of the amp and the wall
terminals.

In the dressing room, I have a conventional hifi and a normal pair of
speakers. These are driven by a KAT5 unit from the "tape loop" of
the bedroom hifi. The amp is plugged into an X10 appliance module, and
controlled by HomeVision.

In "normal mode", HomeVision switches on the amp whenever it
detects motion (using an Ecolume PIR). In "guest bedroom mode",
HomeVision leaves the amp switched off. The mode is set with a HomeVision
variable :-)



Regards,

Mark

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