Well, i'm partially through rebuilding the server room to better accomdate all this stuff. certainly looks better than this before picture (http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/temp/room.JPG). You can see the studs I put on the ceiling to mark off where the interior walls will go. By the time those walls go up, my wallmount rack will be here, at which point i'll put up the patch panel and switch on the right side of the desk.

I guess that's one way to spend a week off work...

http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/temp/serverroom_between.JPG

What an interesting, if a little ironic, night last night. I had just fallen asleep at 12:15am when the Elk went off (night mode). The wife was finishing up a book, so she was up. Thankfully I had put a keypad in the MBR, so I went right to it to see which zone was violated. I then handed my wife the golf club (5wood) that we keep in the MBR and told her to go to the kids room. I decided to bum-rush the 1 inside door leading to the room so as to take any intruder by surprise.

Thankfully no one was inside the house, but I did make NextAlarm stay on the phone with me as I checked it out ( the guy was great - very understanding). The huge bummer is that due to the rewiring, the camera pointed right at that window wasn't connected up (since fixed). Hence, we couldn't tell if it was a false alarm or not from inside the house, and i wasn't about to go outside to check for marks. The one thing I can think of is that I hosed off that particular windowsill pretty hard with the nozzle in "jet" mode, perhaps that interfered with the wireless sensors somehow. I'll check the outer window for jimmy marks tomorrow, forgot today.

Anyway, my lessons learned are:
- keypad in MBR has already proven to be a *very* valuable thing, and the wife is now very happy that it is there. Seriously, she high-fived me and said "ok, THAT was a good idea."
- variety of speakers throughout the house are also good, as it can undoubtedly alert any intruder as to detection
- Having a "process" that me/wife understand and agree to in event of issue is also good.
- 2 golf clubs in the MBR is a good idea, so I don't have to grab the steak knife en-route to the point of intrusion

Ok, i'm starting to get a little bugged with these wireless sensors. I just noticed the Elk report the window next to the 'tripped' one in the above story as being open, but I know it's closed. Granted, these are the 2 farthest ones from the M1XRF receiver, but it's only 50' max.

That area is already double-covered, so I made the windows non-alarm zones, which defeats the purpose of having them. Hopefully I hear back from someone as to why this could be happening, or else i'm going to be running a few more wires sooner than I thought. So much for wireless being "bulletproof"...

Curious as to why you didn't use the wired window sensors? I am about to wire up a panel but my windows are in exterior cinder block covered with lathe/plaster. Not sure how I'd get the wires to the sensors. Is that the issue you faced?

Curious as to why you didn't use the wired window sensors? I am about to wire up a panel but my windows are in exterior cinder block covered with lathe/plaster. Not sure how I'd get the wires to the sensors. Is that the issue you faced?

It was primarily a time-driven reason. I still have nearly a dozen wired sensors in the parts closet, but we were experiencing a crime wave, and 2 incidents of home break-ins were reported inside of 7 days. The wife wanted every window protected ASAP, and I was able to mount 15 in 3.5 hours on a Friday afternoon off work, including ElkRP config.

With wired sensors, it was closer to 1 hour per run, longer for the ones with AC nearby. I don't have cinder block to contend with though, I guess that's one good thing.

Another one failed, this one is 20' away from the wireless receiver.

At this point i'm declaring the use of wireless sensors to be a big mistake. (http://www.cocoontech.com/index.php?showtopic=8121) I'm going to pull them all out and replace with wired ones. If your network wifi cxn drops out, the cops don't come. Another one failed, wife couldn't alarm the system, and had to get me out of bed as I had decided to go to sleep early in advance of a big day tomorrow. Oh well, I guess another 8 cups of coffee day is in my future.

YIKES!!! That sucks man. I wonder if it's just a bad batch of sensors or the brand is junk.

Guess this means you've got a buy weekend coming up. I hate it when you get plans for a weekend (or just plan to relax), and it all goes to the crapper because of something small. I hope it goes smoothly for you.

Wonder if your reciever is hosed if your having a number of them fail at the same time.

Wonder if your reciever is hosed if your having a number of them fail at the same time.

It's interesting, someone on the CQC forum asked that too. Thing is, the only true way to "test" that is to replace the receiver and try again. And, if it fails, either the cops come or my wife can't arm the system and wakes my ass up again.

Either way, not a good way to do this. Perhaps i'll have a better attitude tomorrow, once i'm over the bitterness of last night (for those of you who didn't catch the 4:30am post-time on that entry) :)

Interesting thing, this HA journey, and interesting places it's led me.

I took a half-day off yesterday, had this burning desire not to shop at newegg (haven't bought parts in weeks/months), not to muck with my interfaces or rules (haven't touched screens or event engine in months), but to go to Home Depot and get some plywood, romex, and junction boxes for the basement server room rewiring. Initially I was just going to put up walls, but then decided that running the physical romex wasn't that big a deal, I'd just get an electrician in to examine my stapling and do the terminations both at the box and at the panel. Oh, and maybe a fan. And a light.

Today, my in-laws decided to recruit me to help do some *very* simple work at their house. Replacing light fixtures, switches, outlets, etc. I figured that would be simple and maybe 2 hours of work, esp after what i've been through, and given that their house was totally redone 25 years ago. Well wouldn't you know it, they picked the one room that hadn't been touched in many decades, so that sucked up the whole day.

Anyhow, the point i'm trying to make is that dipping my toe into the HA pool led me to basic home wiring led me to basic home repair and has now led me to intermediate home repair. There have been some very interesting CQC developments, esp with the V2.2 that's going G/A this week, but i'm still more interested in running that romex than integrating my iTunes with that new driver.

Normal people would have gone the other way, doing the wiring first, then going from there but there weren't really any DIY'ers around 22ish months ago when I started down this road doing HA/HT and talking about it so I suppose the organic growth option has been entertaining.

Well, in a fantastically fantastic long weekend, I blazed through tons of stuff. In the past 4 days, I:
- Mounted the rest of my heat/smoke/CO sensors
- Added another non-alarm sensor on the Basement Door
- Mounted/fixed 2 more CCTVs and re-adjusted the front door one after a squirrel jumped on it and moved it
- Used my Leviton SMC for the first time to run 2 new telephone runs. Given that we only actually have 1 cordless phone base with a bunch of extensions thoughout the house, I can now completely ditch my existing telephone wiring and go entirely with the new stuff that I've put in.
- And, most importantly, I mounted my new 300 pound maglock on our outer door. It's too weak for front-door/back-door usage, but for a mudroom door it's just fine.

Check out the pics. I had to use 2x4 to fashion an L bracket as the 300# maglock doesn't come with one.

I can now arm/disarm the outer door through the keypad that's mounted at the front-door or through CQC. I'm going to setup a rule in the Elk to automatically lock it when the Elk is set to ArmStay mode, and unlock it upon Disarm.

Most importantly, the wife is happy I got this done before Halloween as we can lock the doors up at 8pm tomorrow night, and the hooligan ruffian types will hopefully just move on to the other house.

http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/wordpress/maglock_armature.jpg



http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/wordpress/maglock_door.jpg



http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/wordpress/maglock_closed.jpg



http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/wordpress/maglock_arm_outer.jpg



And here's the CQC screen. Although now that I look at it, I wonder if I should flip the red/green status, or perhaps use another set of on/off images.

http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/screenshots/VS20/overlay_elk_doors.jpg

BTW, here's the latest CCTV image. I had to go to a 8grid view (3x3) as I'm about to put in the 5th CCTV.

http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/screenshots/VS20/overlay_camera.jpg


there are z-brackets to hold the maglock strike plates on with. I dont know if you still have the wood for it, but its a cleaner install. We get them from ADI.

also i see youre building a room for your equipment. i did that into my garage about 2 years ago, and in retrospect heres what i would have done differently. This may not work for you since you have no attic access above.
also im not sure how this works with your building code or if you even care.


I would pick which wall i would want my equipment to be mounted on. that wall i would make either 6 or 8 inches thick, and since its not a supporting wall, i would put my studs on 2 feet centers. I would find as straight a board and no knots as possible for those studs. then i would get 3/4 inch plywood with 1 side finished. put the plywood on the outside wall with the finished side facing into the wall. then you can put sheetrock or whatever on the inside wall. drill some holes through the top plate for some 2 or 3 inch conduit to stub up into the attic for an easy fishing way. on the inside figure out how high you want the bottom of your "enclosure" to be and put a board across to keep things from falling into the wall. this way you can paint the inside of the wall, and have an inwall can as big as you want, and put whatever kind of doors you would like onthe outside. use 2 cavities and you could have a 4 foot wide can, everything hidden, as tall as you would like. drill some holes and put small pieces of pipe so you can have a way to go from cavity to cavity. i wishi would have done this on mine, but now it would require tearing a wall out, and re routing the electric i ran right through the center of it. it still may happen one day as my closet is getting cramped. just a suggestion...

this way you can use plastic standoffs and wood screws to mount your equipment wherever youd like. also put sheetrock over the plywood on the ouside if youd like to hide that. this is really making me want to redo my av/server closet.

there are z-brackets to hold the maglock strike plates on with. I dont know if you still have the wood for it, but its a cleaner install. We get them from ADI.
Still got the wood, but mainly because the wife decided she wants new doors. I'm not going through that twice, so I figured i'd see if I can fully embed the hardware into the new doors now that we've proven this works with 100% uptime.

in retrospect heres what i would have done differently.
Well, that particular method won't work due to the nonaccess above, but it certainly interesting for the eventual house remodel.

WOW that was a lot of reading, but there was a lot of good information in there.

I was wondering why you didn't use your home theater speakers for the announcements? Just curious.

What are you doing about Premium HD channels (if anything). I know you have have the basic channels (ABC, Fox, etc) through a tv tuner card, but what if someone wants to watch HBO HD or an on demand movie? This is assuming you subscribe to all that.

Lastly, would there be an issue with using CQC to arm an alarm system instead of having a dedicated alarm panel?

Thanks for all the great info, I can't wait to start on Home Automation when I eventually buy a house this summer (i'm 20).

WOW that was a lot of reading, but there was a lot of good information in there.

I was wondering why you didn't use your home theater speakers for the announcements? Just curious.

Actually I now use the whole-house/HT speakers for some of the "nice-to-have" voice announcements but only in the early am. I use the Elk for alarm, doorbell sound, and a few others that are "mission-critical" and time-sensitive.
Here's why:
1) Wife & I both got bugged at the TV/CD/etc dropping out in favor of the HA announcement. Mixing made both signals unintelligible. I do the TTS stuff in the early am as a wakeup, to announce weather & time so we get out of bed/dress kids correctly. No way will the TV be on then.
2) Startup delay. It took my Denon 3805 (HT receiver) ~2s to do the switching if it was on, ~5s to startup & switch to right input if it was off. Doesn't sound like much of a delay, but if someone is at the doorbell that's long enough for them to think it isn't working and pound on the door.

What are you doing about Premium HD channels (if anything). I know you have have the basic channels (ABC, Fox, etc) through a tv tuner card, but what if someone wants to watch HBO HD or an on demand movie? This is assuming you subscribe to all that.

That's the current hole in the plan. I don't have HBOHD/etc, I'm hoping that once D* cuts over fully to the mpeg4 standard and a few months go by, someone will create an aftermarket mechanism to do this. In the meantime, I get tons of regular HD channels OTA, so it's really only ESPN/HBO; i think USA & SCIFI may have just gone HD, in which case it's getting really hard to resist. Thank god I haven't subscibed yet, I couldn't go from HD back to SD just for automation purposes.

Lastly, would there be an issue with using CQC to arm an alarm system instead of having a dedicated alarm panel?

Depends on your opinion of what an "issue" is. On the one hand, no, technically there's no issue with that. OTOH:
1) if there's ever a server hard disk crash while you're out of town, the wife can't arm the system.
2) Resale value - other folks want a regular, simple system
3) Form Factor - in my house, it's easy to find a spot for either the KP1 pictured above or a single-gang KP2. Touchscreens really need to be 8" or so in order to be useful (to me). With a bezel, that's ~10", which gets to be pertty dang obtrusive
4) Code? I wonder if there's any regs that require a valid security system to have panels at the major entry/egress points.

Thanks for all the great info, I can't wait to start on Home Automation when I eventually buy a house this summer (i'm 20).
You're buying a house @21? That's either truly brilliant (cuz I wish I did) or truly stupid (cuz I felt that spending half my money on wine/women/song and wasting the other half sounded like a good idea at the time).

Actually I now use the whole-house/HT speakers for some of the "nice-to-have" voice announcements but only in the early am. I use the Elk for alarm, doorbell sound, and a few others that are "mission-critical" and time-sensitive.
Here's why:
1) Wife & I both got bugged at the TV/CD/etc dropping out in favor of the HA announcement. Mixing made both signals unintelligible. I do the TTS stuff in the early am as a wakeup, to announce weather & time so we get out of bed/dress kids correctly. No way will the TV be on then.
2) Startup delay. It took my Denon 3805 (HT receiver) ~2s to do the switching if it was on, ~5s to startup & switch to right input if it was off. Doesn't sound like much of a delay, but if someone is at the doorbell that's long enough for them to think it isn't working and pound on the door.

I didn't think of that, that does make sense. Are the Elk speakers the little ones on the keypad or are they different ones?


That's the current hole in the plan. I don't have HBOHD/etc, I'm hoping that once D* cuts over fully to the mpeg4 standard and a few months go by, someone will create an aftermarket mechanism to do this. In the meantime, I get tons of regular HD channels OTA, so it's really only ESPN/HBO; i think USA & SCIFI may have just gone HD, in which case it's getting really hard to resist. Thank god I haven't subscibed yet, I couldn't go from HD back to SD just for automation purposes.

Oh, I never knew there were so many OTA HD stations. I did some googleing yesterday and found this thread which allows control of an HD STB through firewire (http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/1/98686/ShowThread.aspx). The last page (30) has some info about how your cable co (not sure about satellite) has to give you a STB with a working firewire port.


Depends on your opinion of what an "issue" is. On the one hand, no, technically there's no issue with that. OTOH:
1) if there's ever a server hard disk crash while you're out of town, the wife can't arm the system.
2) Resale value - other folks want a regular, simple system
3) Form Factor - in my house, it's easy to find a spot for either the KP1 pictured above or a single-gang KP2. Touchscreens really need to be 8" or so in order to be useful (to me). With a bezel, that's ~10", which gets to be pertty dang obtrusive
4) Code? I wonder if there's any regs that require a valid security system to have panels at the major entry/egress points.

Oh yeah good points, that was a dumb question. I thought of the one about the server crashing, but wanted to see if you knew more than I did. The ELK KP2 is really nice! I wouldn't mind that.


You're buying a house @21? That's either truly brilliant (cuz I wish I did) or truly stupid (cuz I felt that spending half my money on wine/women/song and wasting the other half sounded like a good idea at the time).

Hopefully before the summer. My mom's downsizing our house (and I feel it's time to move out) and I don't see myself in an apartment. I was thinking of buying a fixer-up and renting out the extra rooms to people at my college (or in the area).

I didn't think of that, that does make sense. Are the Elk speakers the little ones on the keypad or are they different ones?

I got these Elk-SP12F single gang speakers (http://www.automatedoutlet.com/product.php?productid=1838&cat=69&page=1) and mounted them in-wall.

This is what they look like:
http://www.automatedoutlet.com/image.php?type=P&id=1838

This is the on/off through CQC. Note the mini-pic of that speaker above. I put each speaker through an Elk relay, and I just turn the relay on/off via the CQC->Elk integration.

This proved esp useful on Halloween as I turned off the doorbell (played only via CQC) at 8:30pm when I thought it was too late to condone trick-or-treating. I turned it back on at 10:30pm as the streets were quiet then.

http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/screenshots/cleanv1/overlay_house_overview.jpg

I got these Elk-SP12F single gang speakers (http://www.automatedoutlet.com/product.php?productid=1838&cat=69&page=1) and mounted them in-wall.

This is what they look like:

This is the on/off through CQC. Note the mini-pic of that speaker above. I put each speaker through an Elk relay, and I just turn the relay on/off via the CQC->Elk integration.

This proved esp useful on Halloween as I turned off the doorbell (played only via CQC) at 8:30pm when I thought it was too late to condone trick-or-treating. I turned it back on at 10:30pm as the streets were quiet then.


Ah that's cool! 8:30 too late for Trick-or-Treating?!?!? It's NEVER too late to Trick-Or-Treat! BTW, I'm in CA and I have never heard of a mud room before. I guess around here we use our garages for that.

Oy. What would make me revive this thread with a new post?

Anger. Severe Anger. At Myself.

My god**%*&%& NuVo Concerto that I bought off eBay for $500 turned out to be not such a good deal. It just died.

If you consider that I bought the Xantech ZPR68 for $200ish 2 years ago, then this, for just a few hundred more I could have gotten something under warranty new.

I'm unsure about what to do next, figure i'll sleep on it and ask Martin @EHX (get this one fixed and pay for it, etc).

Damn, damn, damn.

I finally swapped out 3 of my $40 and unstable wireless window sensors for the hardwired $2 and stable variety. I'll be fully ripping out all wireless sensors, at least the "security" ones, perhaps re-using them for stuff like deck gates where it's a "non-alarm" zone.

I post b/c I finally used the 54" long, 3/8" diameter flex drill bit I bought a year ago to drill through the window. Damn that thing is cool. I used it in a 3-window "bay" that's pushed out from the foundation, so I couldn't just push the drill all the way through and pull the drill bit and then wire out the other side. There's two things I thought were cool:

1) I was able to use my left hand at the middle of the big, just above the hole, to keep it going straight in. I used my right hand to hold the drill, and bend it back about 20 degrees as the window as above the hole and I didn't want to spend 2 hours taking it out/putting it back in. Good thing i've got a relatively high tolerance for pain & heat - I opted to not use gloves or a cloth to hold the bit on my left hand as I couldn't get a "feel" for when I was pushing through wood studs vs subfloor, and when I had cleared it. For those of you who've met me, i'm sure you can picture this; the rest of you, look at what i've gone through over the past 18 months to deploy HA - burning the crap out of my hands was a walk in the park :-)

2) I have one of those long plastic fish wire sticks, but it had a different and harder flex level than the bit so I couldn't get that through the hole without removing the window. As mentioned before, I couldn't just push the wire through the bit all the way through since I couldn't pull the bit out the other end. Hence, I pulled the bit out of the drill, turned it around, and taped 22/2 to the end; piece of cake to push that through the hole all the way down.

3 wireless sensors swapped out, 13 more to go. I'll have to use the fugly surface mount I can't do this with all of them as I have a/c wiring below some windows. I'm hoping I can embed 75% of them due to the low WAF of surface mount, but the wife agrees that ugly surface mount is better than unstable wireless or no security, so that's something.

I must confess that I admire your balls--are you related to a certain Head coach of an undefeated American football team in New England? I am not sure I'd publish any of those wiring terminations. I am hardly confessing that my home is done much better but I haven't published any pictures of my own wiring:)

I am in the process of my own rennovation. No, I am not using CQC but I am doing HVAC, CCTV, security, centralized lighting, music and video. My oldest daughter is getting an iPod interface. I stupidly forgot to run a wire for my youngest daughter--a mistake I will rue in a few years. We rewired the entire house, including the high voltage from scratch and no, it was not a gut rennovation I may be no fan of electricians but I, too, colapsed after pulling a 3x4 gage wire 100 feet through joists. I cannot describe how long it took to install the 60 or so high hats and then how long to connect the tails.

Why did you not use L/Bs inbetween your pipe runs? It would have been much neater. You were very wise to use velco instead of wire ties. Most pros, including my guys, prefer wire ties and I hate them. I'm always cutting the wire ties when I have to add a wire, trace a wire or trouble shoot the system. But I also forget to order the very expensive velco which is one more reason my guys use wire ties ( the other is you can torque them down tighter so it looks better and in so doing occationally break a wire but that's an other story).

Alan

Why did you not use L/Bs inbetween your pipe runs? It would have been much neater. You were very wise to use velco instead of wire ties. Most pros, including my guys, prefer wire ties and I hate them. I'm always cutting the wire ties when I have to add a wire, trace a wire or trouble shoot the system.

I'm terrified to ask in case I find out about yet another thing I should have done, but what's an "L/B"? I have to admit, I didn't know about conduits until I had done 15 wires from attic->basement, and was promptly pissed at how much time I had wasted and how ugly it looked.

And don't give me too much credit on the velcro - I used wire ties for the first several months (bought a 500 pack), then after I had to constantly cut them I bought several feet of the endless velcro. Life really is much easier with that.

I'm terrified to ask in case I find out about yet another thing I should have done, but what's an "L/B"? I have to admit, I didn't know about conduits until I had done 15 wires from attic->basement, and was promptly pissed at how much time I had wasted and how ugly it looked.



http://www.foxelectricsupply.com/content/products/ProductDetail.asp?qsCatID=24980&qsProductNo=MADLB125

I am very unskilled at HTML or I'd just have posted the picture. They most certainly come in all sizes and in PVC as well as EMT. Home Depot and Lowes stock them, though I could not locate one on Home Depot's web site.

Essentially it's a 90 degree turn with removable side piece so you can pull wire up the riser and make the 90 degree horrizontal turn. Put the cover back on and no one can see anything but a neat pipe job.

You do not, repeat do not, want to go back and remove the terminations and repull that wire.

Also unrelated but I did most of the high voltage work. It cost the job almost 6 weeks. Minor code screw ups, dumb me did not understand how 220 could work with just 2 wires, it took forever to connect the disconnect to the compressor and then locate a double pole switch for the blower. Outdoor electrical boxes were never cut in properly so they stick out. Service panels took longer than they should have not because it is hard but because I work and this was only part time--while the contractor worked full time. I ordered the wrong weather head for the new service, I forgot to get a new grounding rod and water main ground, need I go on? It's not that I do not do my share of DIY so it's not that I do not understand the imputus for doing it yourself. But an electrician would have known not to locate the disconnect for the compressor directly behind it ( I knew this but my guys didn't ) and were I not out of the state as much as I was earning the money to pay for the rennovation I might have had more time to devote to it. In the end it will all get fixed, pass inspection and I'll have saved a few sheckles. It's a hobby, isn't it? The devil is in the details. Perhpas I will post after pictures as the wiring will be much neater this time ( I hope ). I must confess that I admire the effort you have put in to your project. You do work an other job during the week? And then you do this at night or on weekends? Find any time to see your wife or children or do they see your hobby as an opportunity to endulge their "hobby." shopping? My wife just came back from the mall, but I digress.

Alan

Essentially it's a 90 degree turn with removable side piece so you can pull wire up the riser and make the 90 degree horrizontal turn. Put the cover back on and no one can see anything but a neat pipe job.

Ah, got it. Well I pulled out all the pipe cuz I was having issues with the bends, so now it's just the straight wire. It's just too many damn wires for anything less than 3" pipe, which looks positively monstrous. I'm about to cross the 100wire mark in that location alone now that i'm doing all those windows hardwired. Doesn't look bad at all, actually my builder neighbor thinks it looks better than much of the work his sub's do.

You do work an other job during the week? And then you do this at night or on weekends? Find any time to see your wife or children or do they see your hobby as an opportunity to endulge their "hobby." shopping?

Yep, got a real job, love it but it's fairly stressful so this is my therapy. It's only 40ish hours/week, so I can usually come home around 5:30ish, hang with the kids until 8pm, hang with wife until 9-10pm, do this stuff until midnight-ish. I don't need more than 5ish hours of sleep per night, it's amazing what one can get done when one doesn't sleep. The wire-pulling/etc is typically reserved from when they'll be out of the house, which is what you state but reversing the cause/effect (i indulge my hobby when they're off indulging theirs).

Then again, about 6ish months ago, right around the time this thread started moving real slow, was when I throttled way back. After all, most everything was done, or "done enough" in my house, so I opted to just sit back and enjoy it. The only time I muck with things now is if I want to make something a little better (ie, the hardwired sensors, i'm currently moving/adding some CCTV as burglaries & auto-theft is increasing in my hood).

Also unrelated but I did most of the high voltage work.
You are a brave man - that bit is beyond me, and i find my head on the verge of exploding with all that i've learned just with LV, i can't imagine trying to cram anything else in there.

I did 2 things this past weekend, one interesting, one frustrating.

1) I got a backbox from CollinR for the bosch 540line variable-focus, variable-zoom bosch camera that I bought, and I finally mounted it. The backbox made it look very clean on a surface-mount, check out the pic.

This was the frustrating thing though - the issue with variable focus, variable zoom is that you have to, well, focus&zoom it. I keep forgetting to take a picture during the day, and to take a snapshot from the recording would mean I have to go downstairs as it's god-awful-slow over VNC. I'll get to that someday when I remember, but it's currently much crappier than my 480L Vitek camera. Oh well.

http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/images/bosch_camera.JPG

2) I added 2 more zWave switches to my setup: One in the basement, and one in the pic above, just outside the back door. You'll notice I had to use a screw-in module as i have no 3rd wire, plus the lamp cover now doesn't fit as it's too dang long but the wife is stoked she gets to go shopping for a new cover.

Here's the surprising thing though - both the crawlspace & backdoor are on one side of the house, but suddenly the front-porch switch works *much* faster than it did before. It used to take 1.5s or so to turn on after pressing either the Elk keypad button or the touchscreen. It's been <1s, sometimes damn well near immediate, for 4 days now.

I know zWave is a mesh network, but I have to admit a little surprise that something on the other side of the mesh is faster. Perhaps that basement switch actually makes it to the other side faster than the 1st floor switches, and the routing table is taking that path.

Interesting stuff...

I just finished reading through all of this. I am very impressed at your gusto. I would have given up around your 2nd post. This has been very enlightening. Thanks for sharing all of this!

Heh, you should check out the similar thread on the CQC forum. (http://www.charmedquark.com/vb_forum/showthread.php?t=1314) This one is only 10 pages long, there's a lot more full HA'ers over there asking questions along the way, that one is currently 68 pages!

Today's lesson for Vivek was on the value of building an "easily recreateable config", and how far I really am from that. I have an idea in here about what I could request of Dean for future CQC versions to hack around some Windows stuff, but that won't address my XP config issues.

i'm now realizing how much of a non-appliance I deployed for the server. As I posted above, my boot disk died, and given that I had used a P.O.S. non-RAID1 setup, one disk dying = PC dying. If you're going to do software-based HA, you really need to make sure you get a RAID1 boot disk cuz this *will* happen to you at some point.

Well, in true IVB form I got a wee bit lazy and just used the E6850 3.0GHz Core2Duo I temporarily had in the den. It was supposed to be the new HTPC, but then I would have had a 3way machine swap which would have sucked. So now i've got one hell of an overpowered CQC/CCTV server. I'm sure i'll find a way to eat it up, but damn stuff loads near-instantly. Not that it was slow on the 2.8GHz, but this is a clearly noticeable improvement.

But on to my realization. I was thinking it would be a simple "just name the new machine with the same name as the old one, install the cards & sw, and bada bing".

Yeah, not quite. I had some glitches:
Workarounds may be possible:
1) I use CQC for .WAV playback on phone ring or doorbell. But, I used a non-standardized location (C:\Documents and Settings\Vivek\My Documents\My Music). On the new machine, I hadn't created a "Vivek" user cuz I didn't think of it at the time. I changed it and setup a share drive so that now I point to \\cqcmaster\sounds , and that will have my stuff. Still, there's gotta be a better way. I wonder if I can convince Dean to have a user files section of the \ProgramFiles\CQC directory, or perhaps have CQC store it's stuff in some other directory and have him create an official "backup CQC config" routine that captures that stuff. Of course, then he'd need to have a "restore CQC config" which puts it back in the same place.

2) 4) Random XP config settings, like the "sound scheme", comes defaulted to "windows default". As I have the HAPC sound-output hooked up to the Elk-amp input, I need it to be "no sound". I wonder if the "Files & Settings Transfer Wizard" would have that, and whether it would end up picking up extraneous crap too.

Workarounds unlikely or not easy
3) The new mobo has 2 COM ports on it, the old one had none. Hence, all my COM ports are different, so I had to drop/add the drivers that were on it. This makes me *really* respect the concept of complete standardization across all machines, with all PCs designed to the maximum that any one PC needs to be at. Or, *always* setup your systems to start with COM3, and use filler serial cards if the mobo doesn't have a COM1/2.

4) Although I now put a doorbell.wav file in the right place, it's still not working. Well, I just realized that the default sound device is probably set to the s/pdif out, but I need it to be the stereo headphone jack which is what is hooked up to the Elk speakers. Sigh. It's 44 degrees outside, and I have to go outside to get to the basement which is where the stuff is, or else I'd go fix it now. Plus it's night-time, kids are asleep, so I best not muck with the Elk speakers and wake them up.

I'm sure there's more stuff, but that's all i've hit in 24 hours.

I was contemplating using a hard-disk imaging program, but I don't think that route will work for me as I doubt I'd have the same hardware config on any servers given that years would pass and technology would massively improve. I.E., I don't know how an image of a HD built on a 2.8GHz cpu with no COM ports could even dream of working on a C2D RAID1 for boot PC with 2 COM's on the mobo.

Imaging the server disk would be the easiest way to deal with your issues. Yes, you will have some "clean up" becuase of com port issues and the such when swapping mobos, but nothing major. Hardware isn't that much of any issue with regards to imaging. The "better" programs can handle RAID just fine and go from one hardware platform to the next if configured properly. In addition to that, Vista no longer has issues with HALs like previous versions of Windows.

What I do at work is create a single base XP image with every HAL/Kernel available so it will load on ANY machine we have (from a PIII to a C2 Duo to an Intel Mac). I'll then edit whatever needs to be done and let the custom apps load from the network. This process is even easier at home.

If this sounds like something you want to tackle (yes it is easy), let me know and I'll help you out.

If this sounds like something you want to tackle (yes it is easy), let me know and I'll help you out.

Yes, definitely. The system is still unstable, something is making it randomly reboot itself but once I figure that out i'll def reach out to you. Thanks!

Schawing, the wife has a new favorite feature for CQC - it now automatically wakes up the kitchen touchpanel and displays the camera screen if the doorbell rings!

She told me a week ago when I was mounting that new camera that "do we need more? We don't really use the ones we have b/c it takes too long to wake up the touchpanel and load the screen".

Well, we had my daughter's bday party today, and had 14 screaming 6 year old girls and 2 screaming 6 year old boys over. I needed some quiet time after they all left, so I decided to poke around and see how to do this. I'm embarassed to say that it was ludicrously easy - I hadn't actually paid that much attention to the various CQC upgrades after V2.0, here's all I had to do:

1) Disable the screen-saver in XP
2) Add an "auto-blank-after-60seconds" to the OnLoad command for my main kitchen template. (This goes in the OnLoad section of my 'Wrapper_Touchscreen' template for those of you using my screens)

IntfViewer::SetBlankOpts(60000)


3) Add a "CQC Interface Viewer" driver to be able to remotely control an IV. I called it 'kitchen-IV', which I mention b/c you'll need to know that for the next step.

4) Add a 2nd action to my doorbell trigger (it's hooked up to the Elk) to actually load the overlay. (For those of you using my stuff, the name of my overlay widget in the "Wrapper_Touchscreen" template is "Main_Overlay".)


Devices::FieldWrite (kitchen-IV.LoadOverlay, Main_Overlay, \User\Overlay_Camera)

Here's the progress on the basement, of course I couldn't do it normally, I did some interesting experiments/problems:

I used sanded plywood instead of regular plywood.

In typical IVB fashion, I decided to see how using pre-sanded Birch 2' x 4' plywood (as opposed to the rough cut 4' x 8' that you usually see) would work, that way I figured I wouldn't have to cover/paint them or stress about splinters.

The icky thing is that it required 3-4 pieces per wall, as opposed to a single piece. I'll have to put some alignment boards behind it, so it looks flush on the other side. I'll also need to do something about the seams.

I got a bathroom fan, mounted it sideways for venting purposes.

It's currently setup to vent just to the outer room, but if it gets too hot I can use regular 4" pipe to vent to the outside.

Here's pics of the first 2:
http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/images/inner.jpg

Crap. I got a 23" rack
After I bought the rack off eBay, Steve pointed out why it was only $50 for a 20u rack: It was a 23" rack. I'm currently using 2x4's as rack reducers untill I get real metal ones.

Doesn't this just look purty...
http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/images/rack.jpg

Talk about god-damn irritating - I spent my kids naptime today trying to figure out why I couldn't pull up my house server. I'm on vacation in Hawaii, and the house-sitter was showing up tonight, I wanted to make sure everything was ok. I thought it was:

1) DynDNS being out, so I pulled up my account to find my latest IP address.
2) I hit the IP address directly, still didn't work. Hmmm. What is going on.
3) I pulled up SageTV PlaceShifter using the IP address. Well, that works fine. (god awful bad PQ as I only got 100kbps, but I did connect and stream The Simpsons).

So at this point I give up. Then, while i'm at dinner, the housesitter calls us, says he's outside the house. For the heck of it, I pull up the server on my Cingular PDA phone. Wow - it works! Whatever was wrong has been fixed.

So now i'm back at the hotel, decide to try it on the laptop again. DAMN - it doesn't work!

It's the identical URL, and on a known good laptop, so on top of all the other random points of failure for internet connectivity, I now have to add "hotel's ISP blocks/does funny biz with traffic going to my house server".

Yet another instance of "CQC works fine, but the stupid internet provider is flaky". Thank god I got the cellphone though, so i'm not totally out of business.

Today's lesson: Load balancing your battery backups, and redo your measurements 1-2x/year esp if you have a tendency to add sensors "because you can".

I was in a back&forth with someone on Cocoontech about battery backups of the Elk, when I realized I've added a bunch of stuff after doing my backup runtime calculations, more importantly beyond the headroom I had allocated. I've put a 3rd expander, 3rd keypad, wireless receiver, and output relay on the bus, and a few devices, which are probably adding another 0.5A or more draw. Suddenly my 20 hours of battery backup of the main board are closer to 7. Given that we had a 5 hour power outage 3 weeks ago, which admittedly is rare, I probably should do something to get a little more coverage. The really dumb thing is that I intentionally overspec'ed the 2ndary panel power needs & battery, so i'm currently at 65 hours of coverage there.

I can't simply switch the main & 2ndary batteries as my 2ndary panel would then be much lower than the mainboard, which is bad. Nothing like having the mainboard think that tons of sensors are suddenly going off cuz there's no juice.

Should be a simple & cheap fix though - I wired the Elk M1DBHR data bus hub to power off the mainboard. Given that it's easy to add a 3rd battery, I can just shift that single location to run off a new battery & power source, and then i'll be at least 35 hours everywhere. That's certainly overkill, but it's not like I can order the exact size battery I need for 24 hours, so it's either underspec at 8aH or overspec at 26aH. Since there's only a $50 difference, and since I'm bound to expand again, more headroom doesn't hurt.

What fun - I'll spend my remaining vacation fixing all the instability I've introduced by adding new stuff to a perfectly functioning system. I can't blame myself too much - I was trying to make the system more robust/stable, but I cut myself on my bleeding edge (y'all may know some of these things, but it's bleeding edge to me).

This is all made a little more interesting as i'm getting PRK on my 2nd eye on Thursday (had the first one done in September), and I need to be without contacts until then so i'm walking around only being able to see with one eye. It took 5 minutes to tighten one screw cuz it was tiny and I couldn't focus on it easily.

1) Fix the entire CQC system instability I introduced by putting CQC & CCTV on a mobo that, although is a fully Intel system, isn't one of the "approved AverMedia" mobo's, so it's rebooting itself a few times per day. It's the new DP35 chip, why is this CCTV crap so damn touchy!
Solution: See if the CQC Server, SageTV Server (no video rendering), and SQL*Server Express servers can live on the same C2D E6400 box without getting worse. Return CCTV to the cheapo 2.8GHz Intel mobo that I had working just fine for months.

2) Fix the HVAC I broke by adding a 2nd 8870 & Distribution Panel. I thought I wired this up right, but clearly not. The main thermo works, but the 2nd one isn't communicating with the first, and neither are with CQC or Hyperterminal.

3) Fix the CCTV that isn't working cuz I was moving around my equipment while rebuilding that server room and screwed up the RG6-BNC termination by mistake. The fact that I have the wrong ends for the cable, and that the cable is a POS isn't helping.

1) Fix the entire CQC system instability I introduced by putting CQC & CCTV on a mobo that, although is a fully Intel system, isn't one of the "approved AverMedia" mobo's, so it's rebooting itself a few times per day. It's the new DP35 chip, why is this CCTV crap so damn touchy!
Solution: See if the CQC Server, SageTV Server (no video rendering), and SQL*Server Express servers can live on the same C2D E6400 box without getting worse. Return CCTV to the cheapo 2.8GHz Intel mobo that I had working just fine for months.

Ya know....this is why I started to like stand-alone devices more and more.
I work in IT all day & night so I know what I'm doing around a computer. Still, there are so many issues to worry about when consolidating systems and compatability is one of them. Now, you have to start wondering if you'll always need an outdated system because AverMedia won't support anything new; either HW or SW.

Thanks, IVB.....you've reminded me why I started looking at a STB security DVR in the first place;)

Although I still need to add my 2nd story before I do anything:(

The issue I had with STB Security DVR's was that very few of them truly support mobile devices, and checking the cameras over the cellphone has been truly useful 3-4x/year. Matter of fact, we were in Hawaii for 2 weeks from 12/15->12/29, and used it a few times then.

Not always "mission-critical" stuff though - nearly all our neighbors were also gone, so stuff like "is that stupid free newspaper piling up on our steps, messaging to the world that we're gone". We probably get 1 super-sensitive CCTV retreival per year, but that's enough to make the wife feel good about having that ability for whenever we so choose to use it.

Is that a feature of the AverMedia software or CQC?
I would, at least like to, think that if CQC can connect to the IP networked portion of the DVR for the image that it will do/scale whatever it is you need. The mobile connection is then made through the CQC server. Or do you just connect to the DVR server on its own bypassing CQC for the mobile device?

Avermedia can do direct streaming, I bypass CQC for that. I could set CQC up to grab screenshots regularly updated, but that would probably be 1fps vs the 5-10fps I get directly.

Note to self: When building a server room in the basement, don't forget to plug theh sump pump back in just in case you have a torrential downpower. (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?o=3&f=/c/a/2008/01/04/MN87U9ERT.DTL) My jigsaw is totally submerged, circular saw is halfway submerged, and tons of cardboard & other tools are pretty much destroyed. And, I have only my forgetfulness and laziness to blame :(

My basement has a raised portion and a lower portion. I have 3" of water in the lower portion (not where the servers are) cuz I never plugged the damn sump pump back in. I also have 2" of water in 2 different rooms in the basement, which the Elk warned me about via the Waterbug I bought. (http://www.automatedoutlet.com/product.php?productid=961&cat=0&page=1)

I also just had PRK on my right (dominant) eye yesterday, so I can't see quite clearly, and i'm not supposed to do any heavy lifting, plus I chose to let the kids stay at home today so this'll be interesting. Hmmm. Damn, why isn't there something AutomatedOutlet sells that would actually go clean up the mess!

Super duper roomba time!

There are certain days where i'm very thankful that I DIY'ed, because this 96yr old house would have cost me an arm & a leg in hidden/future costs.

Turns out that the floor for the room in question has actually sunk on either side, and the middle is slightly higher. I never noticed b/c the old owners had put in this fugly outdoor carpeting on it, which was very visually deceptive. I only realized it tonight because I finally got sick of the carpet, ripped it out, and noticed these bizarre water pools on the linoleum that was below it. It's on 3 of the floor edges of the lowered floor. Neither me nor a pro would ever noticed, unless the pro happened to have experience in uneven basement floors. I'm bad with small measurements, but it could be as much as 3/4" or so. This is, of course, a very bad thing since I now have equipment located down there.

So now off to learn how to DIY something else - how to pour a 1ish inch concrete but slanted down towards the sump pump hole without any hard gradations that I trip over.

Yeah, that'll be interesting,

is it on the first floor on in the basement ?
you want to pour 1inch concrete over? it is wodden floor?

be prepare to over brace the floor from below..
and i'd advise you to use 2" where it is lower so u can get at least 1" thic in the middle
anything lower than 1 inch o concrete don't usually last very long

and invest on a few wire-mesh grills to put in the concrete
doesn't cost much, and it makes the concrete a few time stiffer!!
( don't put it on the bottom..it needs to be in the middle of the slab )

Thanks for the tips. It's in the basement, so directly on top of the concrete foundation. I got recommendations for LevelQuik self-leveling. I'm going to get help from someone who has experience with this - I was contemplating hiring someone, but i've had a few different things break around the house in the past 36 hours as a result of the flood so i'm out of money. I'll ask him about this stuff. The hard part is that I need a slight slant, not too much, so it'll direct the water towards the pump. I won't be touching this for a few weeks, so i've got some time to research this.

Well, I had a rather frustrating 48 hours with the floods & random stuff dying around the house and being a total PITA to fix, so I decided to update my list of stuff i've bought for insurance purposes. Martin makes it so easy with his running automated order history, plus i've still got my original invoices from ToyMaster who I got my original stuff from.

As there's been a variety of threads lately asking for tips on Elk parts, I figured i'd put the Elk portion here. This doesn't have the zWave or Leviton SMC stuff on it, but I'm already at just under $4000 with this alone (although that's over a 2 year period). I have a feeling i'm missing a few things, but this is certainly 99% of it.

http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/temp/elk-cost.jpg

Some techie details for those of you who care:
- Doorbells are rigged up directly to Elk zones using CAT5, so they're very simple open/close circuits.
- I'm using an Elk-800 amp which can handle 2-16Ohms
- For each zone, I used a relay on the M1XOVR relay expander
- I mounted 3 of the 32Ohm Elk speakers in parallel so I get a 10Ohm resistance on that leg
- I mounted 1 Elk 8 Ohm External speaker and 1 Elk 8Ohm internal speaker on two seperate legs.
- I *will* be added either a 32Ohm single gang speaker or an 8Ohm regular speaker on leg#4, haven't quite decided which form factor I want.



IVB,

I've really enjoyed your postings on the various forums regarding your HA project - and found them useful. We hope to begin construction in the next 2 months on our new home, and I am in the planning phases for structured wiring, automation, AV, etc. I'll try to be brief, but so far I think: Elk M1G, CQC, Insteon, used component matrix switcher, Nuvo GC.

My question: I plan to separate the Elk announcements / CQC wav's from the home audio speakers like you do. With your 32 ohm surface-mount speakers (http://www.elkproducts.com/products/elk-sp12f.htm) and Elk-800 amp (http://www.elkproducts.com/products/elk-800.htm), do you really get adequate volume? The amp is rated at 10 watts, the speakers at 12 watts. I get the whole calculation of impedance (8 of those speakers in parallel still gives a total 4 ohms - within the amp's tolerances). It just seems hard to believe that that little amp could power 8 speakers in parallel.

My question: I plan to separate the Elk announcements / CQC wav's from the home audio speakers like you do. With your 32 ohm surface-mount speakers (http://www.elkproducts.com/products/elk-sp12f.htm) and Elk-800 amp (http://www.elkproducts.com/products/elk-800.htm), do you really get adequate volume? The amp is rated at 10 watts, the speakers at 12 watts. I get the whole calculation of impedance (8 of those speakers in parallel still gives a total 4 ohms - within the amp's tolerances). It just seems hard to believe that that little amp could power 8 speakers in parallel.

I'll have to try it with all speakers on, with 5 speakers on I can't put it at full volume as it's actually too loud. Keep in mind that it's not for music, just a doorbell or person talking.

I'll have to try it with all speakers on, with 5 speakers on I can't put it at full volume as it's actually too loud. Keep in mind that it's not for music, just a doorbell or person talking.

Yeah, I hear what your sayin abt music vs talking.. .too true. That's very interesting about the sound level with 5 speakers!

What wire did you use for the 32 ohm speakers? I was thinking of running cat5e to the locations and maybe using a pair for those, 2pair for a motion or glass break, etc. in order to take advantage of the wire run. I guess I was just assuming the wire in cat5e is big enough. .

yeah, i used CAT5 too cuz that's what I had laying around and spanky (elk chief engineer) said it was fine. I used both wires in a pair for each side, in case I did something stupid.

Well, one more step forward: I setup JRMC to monitor, import, & convert my CQC-ripped repo to mp3, then sync with my iPod. CQC rips with all the valid .wma tags, so it was generally painless. I setup JRMC to monitor my CQC repo folder and auto-import periodically. At this point, all I do have to manually convert WMA to mp3, and JRMC takes care of putting it in a new location. As iPod's can play .wma files and as I have tons of space left on it, it's not that big a deal to do this rarely.

So that's cool then - a relatively painless way to have a quasi-single process for both iPod lossy and CQC lossless. It's near-invisible to me that JRMC is ripping the mp3 to a seperate location, all I gotta do is periodically select all the WMA files and run the conversion routine. It leaves the CQC repo alone, and populates C:\Music\Artist\Album with the rips.

I suppose I could have used iTunes, but damn I really hate that package. It's just sooooo ugly and hard to use.

I still can't get my Aprilaire Distro panel to work, or SageMC to display a list of ripped DVDs in both of my 2 locations, but that's a vent for another posting. I'm sure they're both user error, but there's nothing like seeing how hard it is to do stuff in new packages to make you feel like a newb all over again.

IVB -

Considering your AverMedia issues (and we've discussed those in the past), have you looked at something like an Axis 2400 or 240Q video server? Another user here is using one for his home, and it just seems so ridiculously simple and easy (and doesn't need a PC).

I'm thinking of implemeting this approach, and am not aware of any reasons why not, so I'd love to hear your opinions.

-Shawn

Thoughts?

After my $325/month electric bill last month, I would positively love to ditch the PC and use a server. However, IIRC, the Axis servers don't properly support PDA cellphones, which is one of the wife's "must-have" options after a few false alarms (one where the neighbor called us to tell us our house was being broken into. Eh, she turned out to be a bit older and with worse eyes than we thought).

If PDA cellphone access isn't an issue for you, absolutely go for the server - they're something like 40watt devices.

They also don't record they just stream, something else to consider in your choices.

yeah, don't get one that isn't also a DVR. That would be, well, silly :D

I don't know from model #s that do that though, as I never ended up going down that route. Some day i'm sure I will.

I run a media center computer 24/7 as well, so I intended to use THAT computer for recording the media. At that point, it could be served to any device, including a PDA, no?

what would do the recording and/or serving? Does Axis come with some form of software package for that, both on the PC and on the PDA?

In my case, I use the native AverMedia app to connect directly to the AverMedia s/w running on that PC. That way I get decent quality streaming, and the s/w is pretty feature rich.

If you use a webpage-based mechanism, you'd have to do refreshes or other funky stuff, plus I'd think it would be tough to switch from one cam to another, or perhaps a quad-view. I also have a cool option to go "fullscreen" on my cellphone, hence even though it's an 8125 with a 320x240, 3" screen, it's not too bad.

I'm not too clear on how it works, but there is a resident program on the computer (probably similar to your AverMedia sw). I'm going to ask the gentleman I've been discussing this with to chime in here.

When I get some time I'd like to go through this thread but I can provide a bit of information about the Axis servers as I'm the one that uses one, the 2400+. It's a Linux based, Mpeg2 encoder and it's very functional and is very feature rich. There is a companion software that comes as one package and must be purchased if you plan to use it for more than one feed. It also looses a few functions in the free version. Not enough to care about IMHO. The program resides on the PC as a TSR and it stays logged into the Axis server downloading the stream and saving it to the hard drive. It uses little resources and has many options for how much video to save and in FPS, or time, or upon detection and etc. One picture at my house has a USA flag in it and you can block out the area of the flag since it's always moving, very useful. I save 1 FPS 24/7 and then durring detection it saves at 1FPS and steps back down after 5 minutes with no detection. Useful and saving harddrive space. I have the system email me a picture of the detection so I get to see it on my phone. I've not tried to get streaming video on my phone but I do go to a web page that is java based that works on the phone and updates the picture on the phone every 30 seconds. I have 4 cameras so I go the the web page I've set up for each camera. I've found this very useful and at work I leave a small 320x240 box open on the bottom of my screen that updates the picture every 30 seconds. It's the underwater fish that I watch. I don't worry about the yard since the detection will let me know.

To give you an idea of the ease of saving the mpeg stream. I've used the program on my laptop connected by my cell phone to the internet and the cell is slow and I still could surf the net and not feel like my system was tied up. A lot has to do with the level of compression and the FPS and the resolution.

On my HP with a 3Ghz D925 which by todays standards is not very fast the PC will stay under 5% with the software saving the video. I play Bluray or HD at the same time and with the 8500GT I still don't hit 50%. You do need some harddrive and I use about 125Gig but that seems to be the only place it hogs and that's because I save 30 days of video.

In the software you click on the icon in the tray and opens the application giving you different views and options on looking for or playing the saved video which is saved in chunks. There is also a companion program which gives you the ability to view the saved video on yet another PC. So from another PC you can open a program and it will log into the PC that is saving the video and view it from there.

John

I'm sorry but I meant to say that the software upon detection saves video at 10FPS and then steps back down after 5 minutes to 1FPS.

I also find my post a bit confusing in that I'm discussing two parts, the Axis server and the axis software. They are not the same and the server has it's own html based software and can run independent of the software that I was discussing. You also can axis the server from many points at the same time and even have wars over who has access to the PTZ functions at the same time. I have three cameras connected to the server with one having PTZ function.

John

Thanks for the post. Does the Axis software have a windows-mobile client, so you can view it over your cellphone via the cellular network, or do you need to do that webpage thing? That's one of the things keeping me with AverMedia;
1) They have a WM5 version of their app that's pretty easy to use on my Cingular 8125 cellphone
2) Allows you to use a DDNS name (ie, i point mine at ivbhouse.dyndns.org so I don't have to worry about my home IP addr changing, as opposed to Kodicomm which only allowed IP addr's, so I'd have to pull up a different page, figure out what my home IP was as my DSL modem resets 1-3x/day, then type that # into the Kodicomm app).

Thanks for the post. Does the Axis software have a windows-mobile client, so you can view it over your cellphone via the cellular network, or do you need to do that webpage thing? That's one of the things keeping me with AverMedia;
1) They have a WM5 version of their app that's pretty easy to use on my Cingular 8125 cellphone
2) Allows you to use a DDNS name (ie, i point mine at ivbhouse.dyndns.org so I don't have to worry about my home IP addr changing, as opposed to Kodicomm which only allowed IP addr's, so I'd have to pull up a different page, figure out what my home IP was as my DSL modem resets 1-3x/day, then type that # into the Kodicomm app).

What fun, you're nuts, but you already knew that? I've really enjoyed your thread and after two cups of coffee a big cookie and a cheese thing that was very good I've come to the end. You have done so much work and although I've read a few complaints along the way I can see that you've had fun. I would have loved to help you with your bracket needs, reworking your 23 inch wide hardware mount and wiring. I have a metal machine shop, wood shop and everything electrical and really, eveything. I once ran a wire for a light switch through a wood beam, no big deal right, except that the hole was 5 feet through a huge finished center vertical beam in my house.

I thought about your aproach to home automation but about 5-10 years ago it wasn't feasable. I've used mostly APC commercial equipment, temperature, smoke detection, failure detection, leak detection. My concerns are different than yours. I live a mile back in the woods and my concerns are electricity to the house, keeping the driveway free of ice and snow, keeping the fish in my 3K gallon pond warm and safe, and getting pictures of any intruders. Where I live the homes get broken into when you're not home and so I chose the insurance route and the video route. Clearly from outside you can see the cameras so you know something is up but what you won't see is just as important. APC makes some really good power equipment that can be hardwired into the house and so control of electrical circuits is possible. I have critical systems connected through an APC backup system and with the software upon the batteries going dead it sends a signal to systems to shut down on their own. I have a couple days of backup and it's a 30AMP 220V system so it can power quite alot. I noticed you talked about this and I'd warn you against letting a backup fall below 50% of battery capacity. The batteries will loose capacity by letting this happen. You also need to replace batteries every 5 years even though they still read good, voltage wise.

The axis server. I don't see a problem with access on a cell phone and the axis has settings that may help. You can even see the video by motion jpeg which I think just about anything can use. My razor sucks for internet and I've not found that it can do anything well so I've not tried it. I've never been able to get it to wrk with pop-mail so I have to use text for otifiactions. On a different phone a friend of mine was able to connect and watch the video real time. The axis has a lot of functionality and one is to ftp images in anyway you want and so I have it ftp to my webhosting company a new image every 30 seconds from all 4 cameras. Two of the pictures end up on my website for famly and friends and with a small java app the webpage updates the pictures in the page every 30 seconds and everyone is happy checking us out. One of the 4 cameras is PTZ and the Axis has the ability to control two PTZ cameras. I wrote another web page which opens just a small java app which reloads the same image every 30 seconds and all interent options are removed so you only see the picture. I wrote this years ago when the cell networks were to slow for streaming video. It works so well that that's still what I use on my cell. I also use it at the office and keep the window at the bottom of my screen and I enjoy watching the fish underwater durring the day.

I tried the PC card years ago and I never got it to work right all the time and I'm sure they are better these days but it seems to use less resources going the way of the Axis. It's a small device that's smaller than a box of crackers and it never goes down. Another thought is where you're saving the video is important. I'm saving to more than one PC and one is not at the house. I have to leave on my HTPC for recording purposes so it's saved on that machine for one.

As for additional software on your cell or PDA there would be no need since the Axis has all the software built in. If you're on a browser that has no support for what you're doing the Axis will notify you and load it for you.

I could also have helped you with your signals problem with the wireless sensors but because of the low power these sensors are not that reliable. All you need is a microwave, cell phone, plasma globe, DC motor (mixer, drill), FL-Light, treadmill and etc. and you will have interference.

I noticed all of your wiring and I have a question for these alarm companies, WHY!!! The APC is able to use CAT-5 and run all the temperature sensors in series and you plug in a terminator on the last one and set a dip switch of each one and then label them in the software. In this day/age you should be able to cat-5 to every sensor throughout the house and maybe at different parts of the house have a module that will allow you to wire up maybe 10 windows with open/close loops. Another idea is coax and each device can speak through the newly run or even existing cable in the home. You'd just have to have a frequency band in the cable filtered out. I really don't get the complexity f this and I fully understand the resistanceand need for a resistor and after dsecting a system more than 10 years ago I thought even then this was dumb technlogy and to find out it's still used makes me shake my head.

Try a search for "view/view.shtml" in google and you'll find more video connections than you can imagine. You will find them all over the world and I've gotten lucky. I just did it and this one is nice http://161.7.8.248/view/view.shtml . It will give you some idea and some will be password protected and some will not.

John

What fun, you're nuts, but you already knew that? I've really enjoyed your thread and after two cups of coffee a big cookie and a cheese thing that was very good I've come to the end.

Thanks. It's a good thing you read this one, not theduplicate version on the CQC forum. That one is now 72 pages long :D (http://www.charmedquark.com/vb_forum/showthread.php?t=1314) .
Some really interesting comments & advice there, but you'd need 2 pots of espresso to get through that.
I noticed all of your wiring and I have a question for these alarm companies, WHY!!! The APC is able to use CAT-5 and run all the temperature sensors in series and you plug in a terminator on the last one and set a dip switch of each one and then label them in the software. In this day/age you should be able to cat-5 to every sensor throughout the house and maybe at different parts of the house have a module that will allow you to wire up maybe 10 windows with open/close loops. John

Actually, you could use CAT5 to door/window/speaker locations, and do multiple ones. The issue with motion sensors is that they need to carry more current than you can with the 24g CAT5 or 23g CAT6. 22g *might* work, but 18/4 is recommended. For smokes and some other sensor types I can't recall, fire-rated wire is required by NEC, not CAT5. But yeah, other than that CAT5 is just fine.

Of course the issue is where to terminate it, as the motion sensor will likely be in the top corner, away from the doors, which is away from the window, which is away from... You could run CAT5 to the room, and use 22/2 from there to each window/etc.

Thanks. It's a good thing you read this one, not theduplicate version on the CQC forum. That one is now 72 pages long :D (http://www.charmedquark.com/vb_forum/showthread.php?t=1314) .
Some really interesting comments & advice there, but you'd need 2 pots of espresso to get through that.


Actually, you could use CAT5 to door/window/speaker locations, and do multiple ones. The issue with motion sensors is that they need to carry more current than you can with the 24g CAT5 or 23g CAT6. 22g *might* work, but 18/4 is recommended. For smokes and some other sensor types I can't recall, fire-rated wire is required by NEC, not CAT5. But yeah, other than that CAT5 is just fine.

Of course the issue is where to terminate it, as the motion sensor will likely be in the top corner, away from the doors, which is away from the window, which is away from... You could run CAT5 to the room, and use 22/2 from there to each window/etc.

In my utopian wiring scheme you'd use a terminator that is a RJ45 plug in type which is what APC uses. The APC motion sensor is just an rj45 plug as is most every connection with APC. It is not a IP-network device but uses standard RJ45 plugs and cat5. They had to do it this way because commercial buildings are wired this way. I had a Axis video camera that connected by one rj45 and used cat5 for both video, audio and power. At both ends was a power over cat5 device. In the APC enviroment most everything is rj45 and the back of the AP9320 that I use is mostly rj45 jacks.

You can run 24 volts over cat5 and my idea is that each device inteligently communicate and thus you'd be able to cascade devices or run them in series and run many of them. The devices you're using are probably 5 volt or maybe 12 volts and the lower the voltage the more limited you are current wise in the smaller gauge wire. I.e. you can run about 1-AMP in 22 gauge wire in a house and at 5 volts that's only 5 watts, not much. At 24 volts you can run 24 watts, nearly 5 times as much. I'm not sure how the power over cat5 works but they probably use more than one pair for power. In 18 gauge you can run 2.3 amps (amps x volts = watts).

Please don't take my response as a debate because this is your thread and I would only want to help if I can and I sure do respect all the work you've done. I tend to see things and say why is it done this way and many times there is a good reason.

John

You'd be the first guy to *not* debate me in any thread here :D

I intellectually understand what you're saying, but as i'm not an engineer all I can say is "eh, that's what the engineering-types told me". Hopefully one of them will jump in here and understand/respond, although typically they're more prevalent on either cocoontech or the CQC forums.

Soreness, incredible soreness. Well, maybe not *that* bad, but in yet another example of how Home Automation has led me down some widely tangential paths, moving the equipment ito the basement meant that
A) I would be down there more often, which
B) made me realize it had a tendency to flood, which
C) made me realize the floor wasn't level, and
D) I had to shore it up.

Oy.

Klindemulder (his forum handle) was going to be out here, and knows how to do this stuff, so he extended his trip so that he could help me with this job.

We just spent 2 days going the concrete route as one corner turned out to be 3" lower than the center, plus that way we could slope it. It turned out great, but it started raining yesterday and I realized

E) there's a crack in the foundation that's leaking water into that room.

Double-Oy.

I may have found it, so my next job is to confirm that, get some of the foundation repair goop, and smear away. There are a couple of "low" spots, but that means 1-2mm, after which the water drains into the sump pump, so it's totally cool. Plus if I patch that foundation crack, water really shouldn't be coming into here anyway.

We even had enough concrete left over to repair my broken step :-)

Check it out. Thanks Keith!

Before

http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/temp/basement1.JPG

After

http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/temp/basement.jpg

http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/temp/basement2-after.jpg

Wow. Can't tell really what the problem was (or why that small section not being level would even be a problem) but hat's off to Keith for helping you out.

I'm constantly impressed with this forum's (and a few others') members willingness to do selfless things for others on the board, whether it's a very detailed post (or several) sharing their knowledge, or POURING CONCRETE. The ladder, you see less often.

Good luck with that patch job IVB. I have a similar situation down here (we may have the only two basements in the bay area) with water intrusion that I still need to get under control.

Wow. Can't tell really what the problem was (or why that small section not being level would even be a problem) but hat's off to Keith for helping you out.

I'm constantly impressed with this forum's (and a few others') members willingness to do selfless things for others on the board, whether it's a very detailed post (or several) sharing their knowledge, or POURING CONCRETE. The ladder, you see less often.


1) GO GIANTS!!!
2) Heck, I didn't even post about how, while we were waiting on one patch of concrete to dry, I asked him to look at my furnace water leak. Turns out he knows about that stuff too, and was able to tell me within 30 seconds that the float switch on my condensate pump was bad, and that either I had to replace the entire $80-ish pump or just the switch (may not be seperately orderable).

So, yep, serious huge public thanks to Keith.

1) GO GIANTS!!!
2) Heck, I didn't even post about how, while we were waiting on one patch of concrete to dry, I asked him to look at my furnace water leak. Turns out he knows about that stuff too, and was able to tell me within 30 seconds that the float switch on my condensate pump was bad, and that either I had to replace the entire $80-ish pump or just the switch (may not be seperately orderable).

So, yep, serious huge public thanks to Keith.

No problem IVB! Next month when I'm in your area let's try adding a second floor! :D

Seriously no thanks necessary. Like shawnharper said, many give selflessly to help others and you're no exception. This was a small way to help where I could. Anything I can help, let me know.

Keith

Well, I finally got off my ass and did some of the projects for which I had purchased parts.

1) Put in the SageTV HDExtender, hooked it up to the SDTV (haven't bought the 2nd HDTV yet). Required upgrading to SageTV 6.3 and upgrading the Extender firmware, but man all of that took mere minutes. I haven't really played with it much, but I did try streaming an HDTV program that I typically have issues with and it worked just fine. And *my god*, the new version of SageTV works lightning fast with CQC via the MX850->MRF300->USBUIRT->CQC->SageTV connection. I swear it's barely measured in milliseconds.

2) Switched the Elk reporting to use my DSL connection & ABN Broadband adapter instead of the phone line as the wife was bugged that it would seize the line and cut off the phone when it reported Arming. After my gazillion wiring mistakes, it was pretty easy. I ended up misreading the directions and pulling the full wire to my RJ31X, which I totally did not need to do. But whatever, I'm a DIY'er, of course I'm going to screw up stuff now & again.

3) Cemented the decision to use a single C2D machine for CQC/SageTV/db server, and a slow Intel machine for AverMedia. Some of you may recall that I got a total hookup on an Intel DP35DP mobo and E6850 cpu (C2D, 3.0GHz). I was going to use that for the CQC server & AverMedia CCTV machine, but I've been having massive issues with the AverMedia compatability. It would constantly freeze up, I ended up doing a daily automated reboot. But, my power bill still sucks, so I decided to move it to the office so at least Photoshop will run fast. I've got an old Intel machine laying around that I used to use as the AverMedia box which worked just fine but couldn't handle both CQC & AverMedia as the CCTV would hog the cpu. With any luck the power bill will be somewhat lower as the Intel is much lower power, and the E6850 will be in standby 90% of the time.

Interesting unsolicited feedback from wife who just started up the HDExtender to watch TV.

She said "hey, what did you do? The picture quality seems MUCH better." (I used to have an MVP in high quality mode).

I wonder if this means she's more likely or less likely to approve the 2nd Plasma purchase for the MBR...

You should have never made it work with the SDTV in the MBR. Then when she saw how good it works with the HDTV she would have to approve of the HDTV purchase.

Hopefully my system isn't showing the first signs of age:

1) I just had my first zWave switch die of natural causes. So that was what, a little over 12 months? Not too bad I suppose, but I hope it isn't the beginning of a wave. (no pun intended)

2) The wiring or insulation for my outdoor speakers has gone bad as one speaker is always on low volume when the power is on, although admittedly the Niles outdoor volume control was pretty tight and I had jammed it all in there when I ran the wiring (2?) years ago. I'm just going to re-run the whole length since I moved the mzone amp location from when I did it.

3) My 3 year old HTPC is acting flaky. It randomly won't play the volume on DirecTV (some stupid audio filter thing), and TheaterTek randomly won't respond to IP control. Reboots take care of it, but that's not a viable answer. I'd switch to the HDExtender and go "client-less", but that means a UMPC in that room for non-TV purposes. I am contemplating doing that, as I hate these a/v or firewall type issues.

Holy cow, I just found my latest powerbill. We have 113 Kwh @300% over the baseline, total kWH of 1025 (does that seem seriously high to anyone else?). That's $0.34878 per Kwh.

I broke out my Kill-A-Watt, the HTPC is running about 150W on average. At a 30 day month, that's 111 Kwh, which means that PC alone is costing me $39/month.

My god man, suddenly I get ROI on a Sage HDExtender plus IP-Serial Server or miniITX in <12 months.

I just had my first zWave switch die of natural causes. So that was what, a little over 12 months? Not too bad I suppose, but I hope it isn't the beginning of a wave. (no pun intended)
The switches are pretty expensive for you to think a year is a good lifetime for them. What's the warranty on them? Some people left Insteon for Zwave due to the Insteon switch problems. At least they have a 2 year warranty.

The switches are pretty expensive for you to think a year is a good lifetime for them. What's the warranty on them? Some people left Insteon for Zwave due to the Insteon switch problems. At least they have a 2 year warranty.

Sorry, I was unclear. There is zero chance I think 12 months is an acceptable timeframe - at that rate, RadioRA is a bargain as I don't have to keep swapping them out.

My point was - I went 12 months without a failure, as opposed to the Insteon crowd. The next 6 months will be very interesting, I do have 2-3 extra zWave switches that I purchased, but if I use them up as more switches blow, i'm going to look elsewhere. I might even try and get HomeWorks RF, but i'll defer that decision until the fall/winter, when the economy and my wife's job security are better known.

Holy cow, I just found my latest powerbill. We have 113 Kwh @300% over the baseline, total kWH of 1025 (does that seem seriously high to anyone else?). That's $0.34878 per Kwh.

I broke out my Kill-A-Watt, the HTPC is running about 150W on average. At a 30 day month, that's 111 Kwh, which means that PC alone is costing me $39/month.

My god man, suddenly I get ROI on a Sage HDExtender plus IP-Serial Server or miniITX in <12 months.


Okay...as the newbie here I will bite...what is a Sage HDExtender plus IP-Serial Server or miniTX...

Thanks...

this is a sage HDextender (http://www.sagetv.com/hd_extender.html) a small, somewhat cheap media extender, that unlike MS Media Extenders actually extends media... strange concept, Microsoft should pay attention to this... but they wont...

IP-serial server is just a box with a bunch of serial ports on one side, and an Ethernet connection on the other... simple really...

minITX is just a really small, low power PC motherboard...

Yeah. I'm going client-less, but I got 6 RS232 devices in the media closet that need controlling. I can get:
- Sage HDExtender to render the live TV or ripped DVDs
- IP-serial server like this one (http://www.logicsupply.com/products/ci_82504m) so I can control those devices through a serial-over-network connection
- or, option B would be a tiny, low-powered PC (http://www.logicsupply.com/products/de945_cd) ie 60watts, with a USB-serial expander to have a "pc" in that room but with much smaller power draw.

Somewhatlost and IVB...thanks, I obviously have a lot of learning an reading still to do...

You and me both, brother, it never ever ever ever ends...

BTW, if you really want reading, the CQC version of this same thread is up to 75 pages. (http://www.charmedquark.com/vb_forum/showthread.php?t=1314) Obviously a ton more chatter over there about specific questions to how i'm doing what.

Holy cow, I just found my latest powerbill. We have 113 Kwh @300% over the baseline, total kWH of 1025 (does that seem seriously high to anyone else?). That's $0.34878 per Kwh..

If I were paying anything near that price, I would be covering every inch of my roof with solar arrays! You didn't explain how your bill is calculated but at almost $.35 per KWH, even a partial solar system with a grid-tie inverter should be a no brainer business case.:eek::eek:

If I were paying anything near that price, I would be covering every inch of my roof with solar arrays! You didn't explain how your bill is calculated but at almost $.35 per KWH, even a partial solar system with a grid-tie inverter should be a no brainer business case.:eek::eek:

Baseline is ~300Kwh/month
Tier 1 (Baseline) - $0.11556
Tier 2 (101-130% of baseline) - $0.13139
Tier 3 (131-200% of baseline) - $0.22708
Tier 4 (201-300% of baseline) - $0.31555
Tier 5 (Over 300% of baseline)- $0.36190

I actually looked at Solar last year when CA had all those rebates, but i'm remodeling my house in the (2? 3?) year timeframe to put a 2nd floor on. I'd be stressed about the idiot construction workers breaking a panel, or charging me extra $$ to offset the extra TLC.

You and me both, brother, it never ever ever ever ends...

BTW, if you really want reading, the CQC version of this same thread is up to 75 pages. (http://www.charmedquark.com/vb_forum/showthread.php?t=1314) Obviously a ton more chatter over there about specific questions to how i'm doing what.


IVB, thanks for the link...that said, I have enough trouble finding time to pour through AVS and the two or three other forums I frequent on a daily basis let alone add another...now, if only I did not have to work to pay for my toys...:rolleyes:

Baseline is ~300Kwh/month
Tier 1 (Baseline) - $0.11556
Tier 2 (101-130% of baseline) - $0.13139
Tier 3 (131-200% of baseline) - $0.22708
Tier 4 (201-300% of baseline) - $0.31555
Tier 5 (Over 300% of baseline)- $0.36190

I actually looked at Solar last year when CA had all those rebates, but i'm remodeling my house in the (2? 3?) year timeframe to put a 2nd floor on. I'd be stressed about the idiot construction workers breaking a panel, or charging me extra $$ to offset the extra TLC.

That is a killer rate structure! I would go broke with that pricing! My electricity (around 2100 Kwh/mo. in the summer) is a single flat rate close to your tier 1 rate! I would certainly be looking to find a way to at least replace the Tier 4 & 5 power with an alternative.

Yeah, suddenly power conservation is *much* more important to me as it's the quickest & easiest path right now.

Would you believe that one of my neighbors who doesn't have much less equipment than I do claims to only do 245 Kwh per month? The woman is an environmental nazi though, hat's off to her for that.

Baseline is ~300Kwh/month
Tier 1 (Baseline) - $0.11556
Tier 2 (101-130% of baseline) - $0.13139
Tier 3 (131-200% of baseline) - $0.22708
Tier 4 (201-300% of baseline) - $0.31555
Tier 5 (Over 300% of baseline)- $0.36190

I actually looked at Solar last year when CA had all those rebates, but i'm remodeling my house in the (2? 3?) year timeframe to put a 2nd floor on. I'd be stressed about the idiot construction workers breaking a panel, or charging me extra $$ to offset the extra TLC.

If you are planning to add another floor, you might want to look at Solar Shingles.
http://www.oksolar.com/roof/
http://www.solar-components.com/pvshingl.htm

Looks like you need to put several meters with seperate billing on your house to get Tier1 pricing on each :)

Hehe, yeah that would be sweet revenge.

What I *really* don't get is why, when I posted to my neighborhood's Yahoo Group about the 6x cost per Kwh differential between CA and most other states, everyone replied with "you need to conserve more". Folks are suggesting that "appropriate" consumption is closer to the 300Kwh->500Kwh levels, any more and i'm wasting power. I don't see how it's physically possible to do that with 4 people in a household.

I mentioned what many of the cocoon'ers said were there consumptions (3000Kwh->7000Kwh), and it didn't seem to phase them.

No shocker to many of you who've seen my posts for the past few years, but good lord do I get bugged about living so close to Be-zerk-eley. They get all worked up about the wrong things...

Interesting, I was just talking with a power broker today. He was telling us about how CA has mandated a lot of renewable power, and spent about 1/4 billion dollars on it. This is now showing up in CA residents power bills. By his numbers it costs 1.5x more to generate renewable power than good old coal. There is no free lunch, therefore the through the roof electric prices.

FWIW, my family of 4 uses around 1,000 KWH per month, which costs me about $0.10/KWH. This is before I have a lot of HA stuff yet installed. I only now have a Sage TV server as far as hardware. I have been trying though to look at energy efficiency as I build the system. This is especially important as I am looking at 3 different computers. One for a TV and Vid server, 1 for a CQC master server/audio server, and one as a 2TB NAS. I have been specing >80% efficient power supplies and <35 watt processors. For example, I am planning the CQC server using a Via C7 integrated with MB as found here: http://www.clubit.com/product_detail.cfm?itemno=CA4842001 a very low power solution with two PCI slots for a serial card and a M-audio card (hopefully this works)

Interesting, I was just talking with a power broker today. He was telling us about how CA has mandated a lot of renewable power, and spent about 1/4 billion dollars on it. This is now showing up in CA residents power bills. By his numbers it costs 1.5x more to generate renewable power than good old coal. There is no free lunch, therefore the through the roof electric prices.



Southern California has a lot of alternative energy plants. I still have a solar panel from one that closed.

We have giant windmill farms and several Solar plants.
Where I live I can see 6 10kw bergey wind turbines that people are buying for home use.

Interesting, I was just talking with a power broker today. He was telling us about how CA has mandated a lot of renewable power, and spent about 1/4 billion dollars on it. This is now showing up in CA residents power bills. By his numbers it costs 1.5x more to generate renewable power than good old coal. There is no free lunch, therefore the through the roof electric prices.

FWIW, my family of 4 uses around 1,000 KWH per month, which costs me about $0.10/KWH. This is before I have a lot of HA stuff yet installed. I only now have a Sage TV server as far as hardware. I have been trying though to look at energy efficiency as I build the system. This is especially important as I am looking at 3 different computers. One for a TV and Vid server, 1 for a CQC master server/audio server, and one as a 2TB NAS. I have been specing >80% efficient power supplies and <35 watt processors. For example, I am planning the CQC server using a Via C7 integrated with MB as found here: http://www.clubit.com/product_detail.cfm?itemno=CA4842001 a very low power solution with two PCI slots for a serial card and a M-audio card (hopefully this works)

I don't doubt that the direct cost of producing electricity from coal is lower but there are so many hidden cost in everything, I don't know if a true comparison of total cost can really be made.

I wish I knew how you were only using 1000 Kwh a month for a family of 4! There are only two of us and I use more than that even in months where I have no cooling cost. I have most of the common things in a home, fridge, freezer, ice maker, electric oven, lights, TV's etc. I only leave one relatively low power PC running 24/7 for fax/music server. My wife does insist on her front landscape lighting being on from sundown to 10 PM but that is not adding a significant amount to our consumption. I think I am going to have to do a serious energy audit!

Heck, my family of 4 used 1025 Kwh last month, and y'all have seen my setup. Currently 3 PCs on 24x7, although I did just realize the 3400 is a touchpanel PC also on 24x7. The shocker for me was that the HTPC alone drew 150W 24x7, slightly higher while rendering (160ishWatts). That's 100 Kwh/month right here.

Time to get a Kill-A-Watt...

Here's another data point for you IVB. We're close by, so the climate/charges should be similar. I am kinda an energy freak at home, so take that into account. Just my wife and I. The dog uses little electricity. 2600 sqft 2-story house.

Baseline Quantity 352.8 Kwh
Baseline Usage 352.8 Kwh @ $0.11556
101-130% of Baseline 106.8 Khh @ $0.13139
131-200% of Baseline 93.3 Kwh @ $0.22708

Total of ~553kwh for a month (2/22-3/21).

I have 2 PCs running 24/7, a main fridge and two "bar" fridges. We have a radiant floor (electric) in the master bath, that runs 2hrs a day at ~600W.

Sure wish the Kill-a-watt could have your $/kwh programmed in so that it read in dollars instead (I know, a nit). I use it but it doesn't "hit home" as much as if it read "The thing costs you $x.xx a month to run."

Heck. More info

Billing date kwh
3/21/2008 553
2/22/2008 619
1/22/2008 888
12/21/2007 786
11/21/2007 652
10/23/2007 555
9/24/2007 673
8/23/2007 572
7/25/2007 623
6/25/2007 622
5/24/2007 504
4/25/2007 468
3/26/2007 575

Jesus; i seriously have something wrong in my house. No idea how your usage is half of mine, even though I have a family of 4.

...
Sure wish the Kill-a-watt could have your $/kwh programmed in so that it read in dollars instead (I know, a nit). I use it but it doesn't "hit home" as much as if it read "The thing costs you $x.xx a month to run."

I think the latest version does allow you to put in your rate and get a running $ total but it probably doesn't allow for a multi-tier rate structure.

If you want something that will provide for multi-tier rates and various other tools, look into Brultech, not cheap but does provide a lot of flexibility.

Well, we did just completely renovate the house. New windows/insulation, new appliances, etc, so we probably have some efficiencies you don't.

So I just checked the power usage one of my old PCs that I gave to my kids, my god what interesting results.

My Abit NF7S2 with the AMD3200 and 3 hard disks uses up 85W in normal mode, goes to 100W when checking the hard disk. Remember, my C2D was doing 150W/160W.

But that's not the interesting bit; I turned it off, dropped it down to 1 hard disk. Dang! It's now down to 65W normal, peaking to 80W when I'm accessing the hard disk! I'm going to slap a Moxa card in there to see what that does to the load but i'm sure it's less than yet another serial expander. So, it looks like i won't be going with the mATX PC in the media closet.

But, I *am* interested in seeing what CollinR's experiment with the Intel Little Valley and the NV5000 turns up; I may get one for that PC.

Ok, I asked for power fees from a bunch of folks, and the data received to-date compiled. I got 22 states, plus 2 canadian provinces and australia. It was seriously all over the map in terms of approach, so I uploaded the raw data here (http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/temp/power.xls), but also created a list of what it would cost for 1000Kwh/month in each location. I'm #2, at least one location is higher prices. Then again, i'd rather be there than where I am, so I gues you get what you pay for :-)

Here's the surprise for me - Some states actually give you a bulk discount for higher tiers. Whereas NorCal starts at $0.11/Kwh and builds up to $0.36, Duke Energy of Ohio charges $.09/Kwh for the first 300, but $.044/Kwh for anything over 1000Kwh! (yes, there's not an extra zero there - marginal costs over 1000Kwh in Ohio are nearly 10x cheaper than CA!)

There's 38 entries as many states had different prices based on the season. Also, I sometimes got different prices for the same state as folks had different companies.

Let me know if there's info I didn't show that you'd like to see.

http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/temp/power.jpg

Dang, so what, 17 months later I *finally* use the surface mount sensors I have to hardwire my windows. (remember that wireless sensor debachle - still haven't lived that down). We just put in a patio, so now 2 windows are kinda within reach, hence there was a clear "change imperative".

didn't turn out too awful; certainly a little uglier than I would have preferred, but there's A/C wiring directly below the windows, so the recessed type would haven't been cost-effective.

Check it out.

http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/temp/surface-mbr-profile.jpg

http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/temp/surface-mbr-base.jpg

http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/temp/surface-mbr-hidden.jpg

Well, I took the day off work to run some additional network & telephone wiring in 3 different rooms, and just clued into what Zaccari was trying to tell me in the chatroom months ago. And damn, this will require re-running 2 telephone runs and buying/selling stuff if I want to "do it right".

For the phone, I've got a Leviton SMC that I've been running CAT5 to, crimping an RJ45 on one side and RJ12 on the other. Well, I just ran another length for the phone and it ain't working, and I keep screwing it up. In that location I had already run the network wiring completely, including jack and patch panel, so I had one working jack. But, I need a phone in that location today (don't ask).

Well, I suddenly remembered what Zaccari told me he does, which is to run all 8 pairs to RJ45 on both ends, and just run the patch panel wire to either the network switch or the telephone hub. My telephone & network switches are ~3' apart so I got a working network cable, moved the patch channel connect from the network switch to the Leviton, and Lo & Behold - It works!

Well avoiding crimps on either side and putting it into a patch panel is much more convenient for initial setup, and the ability to switch the port from telephone to network is also very nice.

But Stupid stupid vivek, i got a bunch of RJ12 and 6pin quickport connect thingeys. And dumber yet, the 2 telephone lines I ran are cut to length to the current telephone switch location.

It'll be pretty quick to re-run both those wires, maybe 30 minutes max each run since it's so easy to access, but it's the redoing of something I did that kills me.

Then again, perfect is the enemy of good, so I should have expected no less from me...

Well I'm screwed wife-wise now.

I was going to buy the 720p RS232-controllable Panny 50" commercial version for $1250 from visualapex. I walked into Magnolia yesterday., looked at the Pioneer Elite Pro1150HD (720p set).

- I looked at the 50" Panny 720p sitting directly next to it. ($1700 for the consumer model)
- I looked at the $2500 price tag, ie twice the price of the commercial Panny.
- I noticed the 6 month zero interest option.
- I noticed the detachable speakers, which could be used in my den as i'm currently one speaker set short of 11 rooms/zones of audio.
- I noticed that a CQC'er is succesfully controlling his Pro1150HD via the RS232 port even though it says "service only".
- I noticed that i'll probably not buy another plasma for 3-5 years, and really, what's an extra $1250 over that timeframe?

It'll be delivered Saturday, from 12pm-3pm.

I just called the wife to tell her. Unfortunately she works very close to the shopping district.

I wonder what she'll notice on her way home.

You know...it is amazing to me how one sided realtionship can be because:

1. we as men are suppose to learn and adapt to female behaviour; BUT

2. we as men have no right to expect woman to do the same...

Time for stand..we are men and this is what we collect / do as it is in our genetic makeup...

Off of soap box now!

Well I'm screwed wife-wise now.

I was going to buy the 720p RS232-controllable Panny 50" commercial version for $1250 from visualapex. I walked into Magnolia yesterday., looked at the Pioneer Elite Pro1150HD (720p set).

- I looked at the 50" Panny 720p sitting directly next to it. ($1700 for the consumer model)
- I looked at the $2500 price tag, ie twice the price of the commercial Panny.
- I noticed the 6 month zero interest option.
- I noticed the detachable speakers, which could be used in my den as i'm currently one speaker set short of 11 rooms/zones of audio.
- I noticed that a CQC'er is succesfully controlling his Pro1150HD via the RS232 port even though it says "service only".
- I noticed that i'll probably not buy another plasma for 3-5 years, and really, what's an extra $1250 over that timeframe?

It'll be delivered Saturday, from 12pm-3pm.

I just called the wife to tell her. Unfortunately she works very close to the shopping district.

I wonder what she'll notice on her way home.

Hi IVB long time no see.

Something less than 1080p in 2008? And wait another 3-5 years before getting 1080p?

Oh well.

Guess I'm not up on my FPTV's, but I really don't understand why you'd pay that much more (double?) for one. Especially since you seem to be programming CQC more than watching TV/movies!

Can you run down the rationale for those of us who may not understand? (i.e. I own a Vizio LCD from Costco and am completely happy with it)

I do realize this is AVS, and we're known to spend too much for our toys, but that purchase (lavish) is in direct contrast to using the detachable speakers from the TV for one of your zones (cheap).

If you get in trouble, you could point out that ... you could have been like me and paid $3500 in late january for the exact same TV. You saved $1000!

It is fantastic - it does a great job with non HD channels, which was one of the big reasons I bought it. The detachable speakers are pretty good. I plugged in a powered sub and I am good to go.

For me, I bought it for the picture... I read alot on the Plasma forum about this generation of Pioneer Kuros and many folks gave it great reviews. The contrast and picture are fantastic. It does an awesome job of non HD channels. I have the ability to tune the picture as well per the specs on teh Plasma forum, but have not gotten around to that yet. I went with the elite because I was hoping to control it thorugh the RS232.

Hi IVB long time no see.

Something less than 1080p in 2008? And wait another 3-5 years before getting 1080p?

Oh well.

Hey dude. Yep, no 1080p for me at this time.
1) I sit 12' back from the TV (opposite sides of the Family Room), and I couldn't personally tell the difference between 1080p and 720p. Sure, when I got to ~7' I could tell clearly, but there is absolutely zero chance I would sit that close. Heck, I'd never sit at 11'.
2) Given that there's almost no 1080p content right now and that I went the same path of "1 technology back" with my $3500 EDTV set back in 2005 which worked out well, I figured I'd go the same route.
3) The fact that the 50" Pio Elite 1080p was $4000 sealed that deal.

Guess I'm not up on my FPTV's, but I really don't understand why you'd pay that much more (double?) for one. Especially since you seem to be programming CQC more than watching TV/movies!

I didn't look at it as "double", I looked at it as $1250 more over 4 years, assuming I ditch the EDTV then and put the 50" in the MBR, and get the 75" 1440p for the FamilyRoom. For $300/year, or $25/month more, I can get a TV that I would never look at and think "yeah that's pretty nice, sure wish I got the Pio though".

Yep, no 1080p for me at this time.
Heresy!!! your AVS Special Member privileges should be forcibly removed from you!!!:eek:
who would of thought we would ever see the day of: IVB the Heretic AV guy...


I didn't look at it as "double", I looked at it as $1250 more over 4 years, assuming I ditch the EDTV then and put the 50" in the MBR, and get the 75" 1440p for the FamilyRoom. For $300/year, or $25/month more, I can get a TV that I would never look at and think "yeah that's pretty nice, sure wish I got the Pio though".
I like Pioneer's, there is just something about them that is better then mere mortal TV's... I haven't looked at any of the newer ones, so my opinion is based solely on the old RPTV's... but they just looked/worked better...

I like Pioneer's, there is just something about them that is better then mere mortal TV's... I haven't looked at any of the newer ones, so my opinion is based solely on the old RPTV's... but they just looked/worked better...

Not just you; when I looked at it live, literally next to the Panny TV, it was clearly a more "polished" look. Certainly wasn't 2x as good, but given that I only get one more bite at the apple in the next 4-5 years, I went for it. There's a solid money-value to "zero regrets".

Heresy!!! your AVS Special Member privileges should be forcibly removed from you!!!:eek:
who would of thought we would ever see the day of: IVB the Heretic AV guy...


...

Second this.

IVB, behave yourself :D

Just to be clear, I was being just a tad bit sarcastic....:p
720P on a screen smaller then 70" at a reasonable viewing distance well look just fine 99.99999% of the time... its only on AVS where people are more concerned about some random number than they are about the actual picture quality that these things come up...:)

FWIW, my family of 4 uses around 1,000 KWH per month, which costs me about $0.10/KWH. This is before I have a lot of HA stuff yet installed. I only now have a Sage TV server as far as hardware. I have been trying though to look at energy efficiency as I build the system. This is especially important as I am looking at 3 different computers. One for a TV and Vid server, 1 for a CQC master server/audio server, and one as a 2TB NAS. I have been specing >80% efficient power supplies and <35 watt processors. For example, I am planning the CQC server using a Via C7 integrated with MB as

Have you considered using VMWare to host all three machines on 1 power efficient multicore server? I use an 8 core server to host virtual machines for video server, file server, transcoding server, and automation server. It makes more efficient use of processing power as one virtual machine is idle, other VMs can use the cpu resources but keeps each function separate from each other.

Hmmm. I don't actually know much about virtual machines, i'm not really that techie.

Have you considered using VMWare to host all three machines on 1 power efficient multicore server? I use an 8 core server to host virtual machines for video server, file server, transcoding server, and automation server. It makes more efficient use of processing power as one virtual machine is idle, other VMs can use the cpu resources but keeps each function separate from each other.

Hmm interesting.

So what do you think of these rack-mount servers (http://www.geeks.com/products_sc.asp?cat=821)? Could I grab one of these cheap and install a non-server OS on it to use for CQC? (XP Pro)

Yes Xp should work well on those and those prices look really good as well.

Have you considered using VMWare to host all three machines on 1 power efficient multicore server? I use an 8 core server to host virtual machines for video server, file server, transcoding server, and automation server. It makes more efficient use of processing power as one virtual machine is idle, other VMs can use the cpu resources but keeps each function separate from each other.

I'm interested in this approach but know very little about VMWare and operational efficiencies on a multi-core PC/Server. Can you provide a brief description of your hardware and software installation?

Most of the software I use I wrote over the last 3 years from the ground up (in C, perl, and Visual Basic): dvr recorder and scheduler, web interface to dvr, XML based scripting engine and RS232 device driver framework, and the touchscreen user interface. (want to release as an open source alternative to CQC, but not quite done yet)

Server consists of dual AMD Opteron Quad Core processors running linux and vmware. There are 4 virtual machines that do the following: hosts media database (mysql), dvr recorder and scheduler, automation script engine and video transcoder (mencoder w/ x264), and windows server 2003 to serve touchpanel ui using RDP.
VMWare gives me all the benifits of running 5 (4 virtual + 1 host) seperate computers with the cost saving of running just 1.
vmware.com has alot of good info and there are alot of how to's on the internet on getting starting using it

Server consists of dual AMD Opteron Quad Core processors running linux and vmware. There are 4 virtual machines that do the following: hosts media database (mysql), dvr recorder and scheduler, automation script engine and video transcoder (mencoder w/ x264), and windows server 2003 to serve touchpanel ui using RDP.
VMWare gives me all the benifits of running 5 (4 virtual + 1 host) seperate computers with the cost saving of running just 1.
vmware.com has alot of good info and there are alot of how to's on the internet on getting starting using it

Thanks!

That is what I wanted to know. What version of Linux are you using as the base operating system, how much memory on the system, can you handle multiple video adapters/streams, etc?

Im using Centos 5.1 with a 2.6.24 kernel and 4GB of ram. Its got 2 cable boxes connected by firewire, 1 ATSC card, and a Hauppauge PVR1600 for analog s-video capture. It has no problem recording 3 HD streams, streaming 3 HD programs to different rooms, and transcoding an MPEG2 to H264 HD program at once with out any hiccups.

Hey guys.....
I can tell you that VMware is great and will run smooth with little fuss (just don't expect much/any 3D support). The best thing about running virtual is using snapshots for testing and recovery. Have an issue....just select a snapshot to return to. I use it for all of my Internet surfing. I no longer care about getting adware/spyware or any viruses installed. I just restart the VM and it's a fresh install just like that! We have it at work for the servers and I just use the free player for home use, which the site even has "appliances" for. VMware for server installs is free. You can also check out Microsoft's desktop version which was free the last time I checked, but no USB support.

And since I know that some people are concerned with their electric bill (right, IVB;)) consolidating servers makes better use of power management.

I'm ignoring these posts as I just bought that Pio plasma a week ago, and a Dell laptop last night to replace the one that's dying.

I can't afford to think about <drool>dual 4 core</drool> cpu's...

Im using Centos 5.1 with a 2.6.24 kernel and 4GB of ram. Its got 2 cable boxes connected by firewire, 1 ATSC card, and a Hauppauge PVR1600 for analog s-video capture. It has no problem recording 3 HD streams, streaming 3 HD programs to different rooms, and transcoding an MPEG2 to H264 HD program at once with out any hiccups.

I have been looking for reviews/test of dual processor motherboards without success. If you don't mind, could you possibly give me a few more details on your system? If you are happy with it, the motherboard and the PS used in your system would be very helpful. Also, you covered your HD stream handling ability but can you also directly supply HD video via the internal video card without impacting your record streams?

The functions I am looking to integrate are:

HD Recording OTA and Cable (2 simultaneous)
Direct HD Playback (1 component stream)
Audio and Video server
Home Automation
Video surveillance system ( I have a 8 port board currently in a system, don't know how well this will work in a VM system since they seem to be picky about exactly what MB/processor they will work with in a stand alone system.)

Any guidance will be greatly appreciated!

Be aware that these 1U servers are screaming banshees, in my experience with 2 Dell machines (Poweredge 1650 and 1750). They run multiple 40mm "squirrel cage" fans to push a lot of air through narrow channels. If I run 'em in the basement I hear them on the main floor. I have to raise my voice to be heard if I'm standing next to them.

Be aware that these 1U servers are screaming banshees, in my experience with 2 Dell machines (Poweredge 1650 and 1750). They run multiple 40mm "squirrel cage" fans to push a lot of air through narrow channels. If I run 'em in the basement I hear them on the main floor. I have to raise my voice to be heard if I'm standing next to them.
Thanks for that insight. I worked in noisy telcom environments for years and have no desire to import anything like that into my home! I plan to use a full size PC case with the quietest fans I can find. It will also be in a totally enclosed cabinet with a slide out rack for service.

Thanks for that insight. I worked in noisy telcom environments for years and have no desire to import anything like that into my home! I plan to use a full size PC case with the quietest fans I can find. It will also be in a totally enclosed cabinet with a slide out rack for service.

My plan is to use these racks (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1008110) in the back of an insulated 4'10" by 7' closet on the main level. I assumed noise from within would not be an issue, but I've never tinkered around with a piece of kit like these 1u machines. . .

I read a 2005 review of a Tyan GS12 rackmount server (1u).. It said "It's cooled by two ferocious 40mm fans at the front of the casing, which spin up to full power when you turn the server on, and may frighten small children. The fans are thermally controlled, though, so a GS12 without much CPU load shouldn't make much more of a racket than a regular desktop PC."
http://www.dansdata.com/images/tyanrack/12fans800.jpg

I'm thinking about trying one of this type of server (http://www.geeks.com/products_sc.asp?cat=821). The price point is enticing enough that I am going to risk the noise issue.

Ergh Just saw a review of a more recent 1u server (Enlight SR-1074 1U Server Chassis).. ELEVEN 40mm fans.
http://projectascension.com/reviews/enlightsr1074/pics/008b.jpg

http://projectascension.com/reviews/enlightsr1074/pics/009b.jpg

From the review:
"Be warned, the noise levels from the fan unit will cause small children to cry and the entire box may take off into space when all fans are running. With all 11 fans running there is so much air being moved and so much noise coming from them that it is hard to hear other people talk!"

I have been looking for reviews/test of dual processor motherboards without success. If you don't mind, could you possibly give me a few more details on your system? If you are happy with it, the motherboard and the PS used in your system would be very helpful. Also, you covered your HD stream handling ability but can you also directly supply HD video via the internal video card without impacting your record streams?

The functions I am looking to integrate are:

HD Recording OTA and Cable (2 simultaneous)
Direct HD Playback (1 component stream)
Audio and Video server
Home Automation
Video surveillance system ( I have a 8 port board currently in a system, don't know how well this will work in a VM system since they seem to be picky about exactly what MB/processor they will work with in a stand alone system.)

Any guidance will be greatly appreciated!

The specs of my server are below. Yes so far I like the system alot. I couldnt get my old PVR150 card to work with the MB, and I'm pretty sure it was a 5V card and the board only has PCI-X slots which only take 3.3V cards. I had some issues with the 4 port eSata not being recogonized by the OS randomly and Supermicro tech support (they are really good and respond quick) couldnt figure it out, and finally the manufacture of the card sent me a new firmware which resolved the issue. I also had the IPMI remote management card die on me, but the sent me a replacement overnight and has been good ever since. Currently I do not have a video card installed in the system, it just has the onboard ATI card that I use to administer it so I cant say for sure, but capturing HD tv as MPEG2 then writing to disk is very easy on the CPU and the program which is responsible for this never goes about 2-3% cpu time, so im sure it could record and play multiple streams no problem. But I wouldnt want to transode MPEG2 to H264 while watchin live or recorded HD, that is much more CPU intensive. The case is extermely loud and I keep it in its own room. Alot of cases that are made for extended ATX boards are going to be loud though and keeping them in a bedroom/media room will be unbearable.

What Automation Server, Surv System, Music/Video Server software are you looking at using?

Based on the functions you are looking to intergrate, you would only be able to use 1 virtual machine for the automation server and have the rest of the software run on the host machine, since for video catpure VMWare doesnt have direct access to the PCI bus.

- Supermicro H8DME-2 AMD nForce motherboard (http://www.supermicro.com/Aplus/motherboard/Opteron2000/MCP55/h8dme-2.cfm)
- (2) AMD Opteron 2350 Quad Core 2.0Ghz cpus
- (2) Western Digital Raptor 160GB system disks in raid1
- (24) Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500Gb data drives in 3 software raid5 arrays
- (1) SIIG 2 port PCIe Firewire card
- (1) pc5000HD ATSC capture card
- (1) Hauppauge HVR-1600 capture card
- (1) Addonics Sil24 4 port eSata card
- (1) Supermicro 8 port internal sata card
- (1) Supermico SIMLC+ IPMI Remote KVM/Management card
- (1) Supermicro 4U tower case http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/4U/942/SC942i-R760.cfm with 760 Watt triple redundant power supplies.

Thanks for the detailed breakdown of your system. The more I understand about VMWare and coupled with your comments, the more I think the applications I want to integrate won't benefit or even work in the VM world. I may be able to load up a single OS/multi processor system with most of the apps but probably not everything I want to do.

More research needed!!!

Thanks again!

As mentioned by jac7788, VMware cannot use expansion cards, but can use USB 2.0 devices. Keep in mind that only 1 "machine" may use a usb device at a time. However, there is a way to force connect a particular usb device to the same machine without worrying about machine focus issues.

Tangible progress after the break. I'm *this* close to being client-less, and using Sage HDExtenders for everything.

I just put in an extender in the H/T media closet. Of course, the second it was done, the wife decided she wanted to watch a netflix DVD that we had so we had to resort back to the HTPC to play that back. So, today I went & got a Marantz DV6001 DVD player with RS232. It was on clearance @Magnolia for $170 so it seemed like a decent deal. I wanted 2way for superior logic-coding ability, but given how rarely we watch physical DVDs I wasn't going to spend much on it.

The hardest part has been figuring out how to use a hardbutton remote control for everything. I'm sure the pros have this figured out as they do it 100 times, but this is the first time i've had to think through this. I've been crutching on the Bluetooth mouse for the mentally difficult stuff. Although I have an MX850 with multi-page support, I didn't want to use more than 1 page as the wife & 6 yr old kid will get baffled and call me, which defeats the point.

Here's what I came up with. I used line #s on the picture, i'll explain those below.

http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/images/MX850-new.JPG

The system is wired such that the 3 component video & audio streams run to the Denon3805, which does the switching.

Line 2/4/5 select which component video stream you want, and sets the Denon to that.

Line 1 is just there for while I run redundant systems, hopefully it's pulled out within 7 days.

Line 3 & 6 are specific to Sage, and either go to the home menu or the recorded shows.

The rest of the buttons rely on CQC to determine what the current device is (as determined by the current source input on the Denon), and only pass it the appropriate command (ie pause/play).

Line 7 is an example of some pretty cool usage of the 2way Sage TCP driver. As you may know, there's 4 different right arrows on the standard SageHDExtender remote (http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=6115&d=1196144183), which do:
While on a menu:
- move cursor right
While playing video:
During Video Playback:
- Fast Forward
- Skip Ahead 30 seconds
- Skip Ahead 3 minutes

So the big question is how to simplify that. Too many damn buttons on that Sage remote for me. I decided that
1) we never need to FFW as we are content with skip ahead.
2) I can use the 2 current MX850 buttons (right and next) for the 30 sec/3min/right by first checking to see if the HDExtender is in Play mode. If it is, then the right button must mean skip 30secs. If not, then it must be in browse mode, so move right.

The volume buttons act directly against the Denon, but everything else is analyzed by CQC to determine where it should send what.

I just finished that up an hour or two ago, so i'll sit with this to see how it feels. I already found some holes in the logic that you see as fixed, who knows what else is out there.

Tangible progress after the break. I'm *this* close to being client-less, and using Sage HDExtenders for everything.


And it is now done. I just removed the SageClient and Theatertek drivers from the HTPC, and I am now only using the HDExtender/777/Marantz as video sources in the H/T room, and only the HDExtender in the MBR.

For the rare occurrence that we watch one of the Sony-777 DVDs, I've been using CQC on my laptop. The wife has her own laptop now too, so she can do the same there. But honestly, 90% of our TV lately has been recorded TV, another 5% is ripped DVDs, the final 5% being a netflix DVD that we watch same-day (as in, don't waste time ripping).

I wonder if this means I gotta redo my whole Intro-To-HomeAutomation powerpoint now...

we run an esx 3.5 host and 27 vm for 2003 server with no problem. keep in mind though these are not sql servers or any dbase vm nor are they video servers. i would expect less than half of the vm from an esx host if i was using these types of servers.

one thing i was thinking about using it for but was told no during training from vmware, was to have multiple hosts running different audio so i could have say 6 vm's as 6 sources of music. unfortunately as of esx 3 they could only support 1 virtual audio stream out the physical card at a time and they could not support mapping to multiple physical cards. if anyone has been able to do this more recently i would really like to hear about it.

vmotion and HA (high availability) are really good selling points but probably overkill for a home server environment. also, it has a balloon driver for another layer of memory support. multiple o/s support is great. even has support for 64bit.

the ability of snapshots are great for rolling back to previous states. and as mentioned, the ability to just turn off a vm or more importantly, roll back to a previous snapshot and just turn it back on saves so much time when the box crashes.

A few weeks into the HD100/no-HTPC, and life is settling in. I had to tweak the CQC IR-receipt logic to be a little tighter when it receives the MX850 signal, so the remote is a little more intelligent about being context-sensitive.

1) One of the RAID5 disks died, I didn't notice for a few days and couldn't figure out why SageTV-live TV or recent recordings weren't working. Once I noticed the tiny little system tray icon that said "raid error", I got another disk and let the array rebuild itself. Damn well took 28 hours, but it's now fine.

2) I'm debating my "use a megachanger for rarely watched DVDs" as it is a little PITA to turn on the touchpanel just to select a DVD. 1TB hard drives are getting pretty darn cheap, and I could swap out the RAID5 500GB x 3 array with a 1TB x 4 array, not increase power costs by that much (~$2/month). I would have to learn how to break the 2TB filesystem limit as that would be a 3TB array. It would also take *days* for when a disk dies, so i'd need a 2nd SageTV recording location in case that happens in the middle of a "Lost" season.

I also just got the HD-PVR installed, still need to connect it to Sage. If that works, my hard disk consumption will go through the roof as much more will be at the 10GB/hour for HD versus 2GB/hour for SD.

Hey IVB....
Does the HD100/Sage app support IR passthrough?
Basically, can I point a different remote (assume same frequency) at the HD100, have the Sage app pick that up, and pass it through a USB-UIRT to control another device which isn't normally controlled by Sage?

Not that I know of, although I haven't paid much attention since mine is in the closet & controlled over TCP by CQC. (my MRF300 repeater catches the MX850 and rexmits to the USBUIRT)

Schawing! Sorta.

After several user-errors due to the total lack of instructions in how to setup an HD-PVR, it's both recording HD inside SageTV and playing back through the HD100 extender. Only watched 60 seconds so far, done some skip ahead/backs, no issues yet. I did set output resolution to 720p.

The one thing I didn't get working was control of the STB. I bought an extra Paterson serial-USB controller hoping it could handle the HR21, also couldn't get IR blasting to work. Didn't try much though.

In the end, here's what I should have done:
1) Install & connect HD-DVR
2) Install all software on the CD
3) Upgrade SageTV to latest beta (6.4.4)
4) Upgrade HD100 to beta firmware

I know, it all sounds simple enough, but it took a while to figure out #2 & #4; i initially only thought the drivers were needed, but the ArcSoft decoders are also on that disc, they're just labeled as "Software" which made it sound optional.

tomorrow i'll deal with the channel changing. As of now, i'm stoked that i've got USA-HD getting recorded.

The odds of a 3TB RAID5 array in the near-term have just gone up tremendously....

IVB,

Maybe I missed it or I'm misunderstanding, are you passing the outputs of the HR21 to the inputs on the Sage server and then sending it to the Sage extender? And why is the DVR necessary if you already have Sage? Couldn't that be used as the DVR? I'm asking because I am trying to find a way to do distribution to a bunch of TV's in my house and Sage might fit the bill with the extenders. I want to use Cat5 for the distribution but did not want to do the whole matrix switcher, baluns thing because it seems like there are still too many issues with that setup. The only issue I see is one you brought up, that you would have trouble watching a DVD on the fly if it hasn't been ripped yet. If you really wanted to though, couldn't you hook up a DVD player to a capture card on the Sage server and play it that way?

Thanks in advance for any info.

I might have the model # wrong, I don't have the D* DVR, just the regular STB. I pass the output of that into the Hauppauge HD-PVR component capture device. It's not really a PVR, it's just a component capture device.

For DVDs, if you have ready access to the server you could just put it in the DVD drive of the server and you'd be set. No capture card needed there. For me, the server is in the crawl space which requires me going outside, so that's not a realistic option. What I did was to run my Extender/Wii/DVDPlayer into my Denon that has component switching, and only one input to the Plasma. That way I have a "local" DVD player in the H/T room.

I quote it because it's technically in the next room, and CQC decides which device to send a "pause" command to if I hit the pause button by looking at the active Denon source input and sending it to that device. Works pretty well.

Oh ok, apologies for mixing up the DTV units.

Just so I make sure I'm reading this correctly: So if I had a Sage server in a reasonably accessibly place, I could just stick the DVD in the drive and I'd be able to play it from there? Is this possible at the extenders as well, meaning if I stuck the DVD in the server drive I would be able to watch it on the extender? What about the DVD's you'd ripped to the server? Sage has the ability to play these as well I assume?

yep. That's what I hear, anyhow, never actually tried it.

Thanks for the info. This should make building out A/V distribution much easier.

meaning if I stuck the DVD in the server drive I would be able to watch it on the extender?

I've been doing this for the last two weeks, and it works great. We typically take a few nights to get though a movie, so I just pop the DVD into the server in the lower floor, and I can watch the movie on any of the extenders through the house. The only issue I've had is that when I sit down to start watching again, the movie sometimes starts where it left off, and sometimes from the beginning. Not sure why...but it's such a minor point. Otherwise everything including FF/Rew, etc., works perfectly at the extender.

Nishan

Well, i've been taking my HD-PVR setup in baby steps. As mentioned above, step 1 was to install the HD-PVR and hook up the DirecTV STB, leaving it on USA-HD. Step 2 was going to be to enable the HD-PVR IRBlaster, but after some SageTV forum threads reporting hassles with that I may wait another week when I won't need the USB-UIRT anymore on my other PC, and move it to the server room.

It recorded fine today with several hours of Law & Order, but there was no channel changing needed.

It plays back *almost* fine on one of my extenders, there's a slight judder perhaps every 7-10 seconds, enough to be annoying. It outputs optical to my Denon, i'll try again later tonight on the HDExtender that is hooked up via analog to my TV. There's some reports of folks having better success with different audio/video filters.

All in all, pretty decent for baby step #1, now I just need to get the channel changing and the judder eliminated.

One really good improvement: I put an IRA IR receiver connected via CAT5 in the home theater/family room because I was sick of the unpredictability that the MX850->MRF300->IRMan had. If the batteries were weak at all, it wouldn't work well. Plus, it wouldn't work perhaps 10% of the keypresses, it appeared that a different IR code was being received by the IRMan than what was being sent.

My god, what a big difference. Not only has it been highly predictable, it's also faster; i wonder if the MRF300 has been putting in a slight delay when doing the retransmit.

AARRGH! PAIN IN THE ASS!

My Concerto & Expander have been out of commission for 6 weeks as they were being serviced by NuVo cuz they weren't working. It cost me $300 to ship them there (3 boxes, some heavy stuff).

I just got them back, set them all up again. When I connected it up, it seemed to work. When I attempted to upload my config via RS-232, it's back to being hosed.

This all happened when I attempted to connect to it via NuVo Configurator through the Lantronix COM over IP serial server. Both the first time and this time. I've got a feeling that's the issue.

God I hope NuVo tells me I can field-reset this thing, and I don't have to ship the freaking thing back to them.

This weekend can only be described by how little progress I made across the board. Here's what *didn't* happen:

1) I wanted to be able to change channels on the DirecTV HD-STB.

I tried:
- Serial connection. Damn paterson tech cable wouldn't work.
- USB-UIRT. Didn't want to learn the H21 IR codes or take the .IR remote code file that came with SageTV.
- HD-DVR IR Blaster. Works fine with the Hauppauge app, but can't get it to work with theSageTV.

So that was a total bust, i'm still stuck with a single channel enabled (USA-HD). At least I'm getting HD versions of the L&O marathon.

2) I wanted to be able to kick off custom logic via IR in the MBR (ie, turn off all the lights as we're always forgetting one at bedtime.

Finally found the IRMan, but it wouldn't work via either CQC or the IRMan application.

3) I wanted to build out the high capacity RAID5 array, so I could decommission several other hard disks and reduce my overall power load.

Yeah, that just sucked. I still can't get the RAID card to even recognize the hard disks.

4) Re-install the NuVo, as it just came back from 6 weeks in the shop.
As said above, the second I plugged it in it died.

So, now i've got:
- An email into Paterson Tech to swap out the nonworking cable.
- An email into NuVo to see what the heck is going on.
- A call into LSI to figure out the MegaRAID card.
- A new IRA-3 just ordered, cuz I know that'll work.

Hopefully next weekend will be more fruitful...

Happy Days are here again! Turns out the NuVo Concerto configurator doesn't like connecting via the Lantronix/IP-serial server. When I hooked it up direct to my laptop (via a dock as that houses the com port), it uploaded the config fine, and now it's working peachy keen through CQC via the Lantronix port.

Still can't figure out how to flash the LSI RAID bios - I must be looking at the wrong file. The firmware is 1.16MB zipped, 2M unzipped, which clearly won't fit on a bootable floppy drive. I've been trading emails with LSI in the morning, so i just pinged them again to see if i'm looking at the wrong location.

WooHoo, things are flying now! I just got the USBUIRT working, now I can tune DirecTV-HD! I'd still love to switch to the PatersonTech serial, but i'll need to wait until i get the new one.

Here's what I found out, and what was needed:
ThAs far as the USB-UIRT you should see a light blink as you learn the code. Your remote must be very close-an inch or less-to the USB-UIRT.

That was it; not only did it have to be "very close", if I was left/right by even 3/4", it wouldn't learn. Needless to say, I wasn't that precise in my first attempt.

Yesterday marked a big day; I took the day off work, and pulled the Sony777ES DVD megachanger from duty and started ripping the 100+ DVDs that were in there. That meant there was only the Denon3805, Sage Extender, Marantz DVD Player, MRF300, and Wii left in the 42U 7' tall rack. Given that it was taking up tons of space, I pulled it out, spent hours cleaning up tons of wiring, and wallmounted the Wii & MRF300.

I'm surrendering the media closet back to the wife, and will use only a 2' high shelf space for the rest. But I wasn't content with that - I also went to Home Depot and got one of those wallmountable 5 position "pole holder thingeys", so the wife could put the broom/mop/duster/2nd mop/some cleaning pole thingey on it.

I had very rare 3thanks response from the wife: "Thank you thank you thank you, i'm going to put both vacuum cleaners and all the cleaning stuff in there now".

Since i'll be selling the rack & Sony777 shortly, perhaps now she'll get over the dozen boxes that UPS delivered over the past week, or the handful of boxes that will be coming over the next week.

There are days when I don't know whether to pity the professional installer for the crap work they must do, or mock them for willingly engaging in a far-too-difficult job for far too little money. I know you guys are doing what you love and I envy you for that, but oy this crap is a PITA sometimes.

Today the Hauppauge HD-PVR stopped working. I have to go out of town for 24 hours tomorrow, no chance of me leaving the wife without this, so down into the crawlspace I go to see what's up. Didn't seem to want to work, regardless of what I push & press.

So I turn it off & turn it back on. Et voila, it works fine now.

How the hell a pro can make any money putting together a disparate system with equipment that is inevitably touchy is beyond me.

Then again, it is literally the first batch of HD-PVRs made by Hauppauge and has only been out for <10 weeks, so I'm not surprised that the very tip of the bleeding edge has issues. If I were a pro, i'd not install anything that hadn't been done 1000x before, but in that case I couldn't get the big bucks as everyone would be doing it, so i'm basically screwed either way.

Been there done that....

Many years ago I used to want to be on the BLEEDING EDGE of PC hardware. And with that I was building PC's for everyone and their brother as a side business. Now, I'm 2-3 steps behind the crowd that's the lagging behind the crowd, and tell all my friends that want PC's that I'll give them a few ideas and help them pick out the parts, but it's up to them to buy it and build it. And I will only provide minimal tech support.

I've had a WHS server for many months, and finally started working on getting the web page working. Now, I have an HD-100 finally setup (and currently replacing my HTPC in the living room), and just last night had to reconfigure my WHS to run headless so I can use the s-video output to pipe the video and audio to my HD-100 so I can stream Pandora radio.

The wife still roll sher eyes every time I go to setup up "something new". Her theory is as long as the TV , and dvd player work, the world is just fine. Recorded TV, streaming media, ripped dvd's, etc... are all just non-sense, and something she'll NEVER use.


I thought of something you could install that might help with having to go into the crawl space to reboot things. Where I work we have some managed power outlets that let our network guys remotely reboot (power cycle) that are on the device. They can reboot individual outlets or the entire power strip. I have no idea of what they cost, but if it wasn't too expensive you could install that, and if anything needed to be rebooted while out of town, you could remote into your network and fit it. Anyway, just a thought....

I thought of something you could install that might help with having to go into the crawl space to reboot things. Where I work we have some managed power outlets that let our network guys remotely reboot (power cycle) that are on the device. They can reboot individual outlets or the entire power strip. I have no idea of what they cost, but if it wasn't too expensive you could install that, and if anything needed to be rebooted while out of town, you could remote into your network and fit it. Anyway, just a thought....
I'm sure Z-Wave has a power switch you could use.

I'm sure Z-Wave has a power switch you could use.I bought one of these serially controlled power strips for what I considered a reasonable cost of $115.
http://www.cpscom.com/gprod/cps.htm

I bought one of these serially controlled power strips for what I considered a reasonable cost of $115.
http://www.cpscom.com/gprod/cps.htm
Yes, that is reasonable for a strip with individually controlled banks.

My general angst is that it's not just the power, sometimes it's other stuff. The bleeding edge really is just that, cuts me up something fierce. I suppose I don't have to do all this crap, but this is worse than crack - once your whole house is automated, and you/wife/kids can watch whatever you want, whenever you want, all in HiDef, it's tough to imagine life any other way...

sage can play dvds ripped to the server. I don't think it can play dvds right from the drive though.

Actually, it can just fine if you load AnyDVD on the server. Folks have even gotten the Sony firewire DVD megachanger to work using that, of course those are discontinued now so I can't find one anywhere.

It's either HA to the rescue, or HA making me spend time on stuff we could train ourselves around.

In the past few months, the Sage HDExtender driving the H/T has started putting itself in standby if not used for a while. I know I upgraded the firmware some time ago, but whether that's related or not I don't know.

Well, the issue here is that it's in the next room, and the family uses the MX850 to switch between video sources. CQC picks up on the command, and turns the TV on, turns denon on, switches to the right stereo input (which is the video switcher also). Imagine your angst if you hit the Sage button below, but the TV is blank.

http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/images/MX850.JPG

Should I put in a power-toggle button on that empty spot? Seems like such a waste. Wouldn't it be much nicer if CQC could tell whether the HDExtender was in standby mode, and powered it up if it was.

Oho, enter HA.

With the help of this cocoontech.com how-to article about photoresistors (http://www.cocoontech.com/index.php?showtopic=1505&st=0) and help from BraveSirRobbin who wrote it, I went to RadioShack, got the $3 pack of photoresistors, and now I can tell if the LED is on or not.

Well, it was a little more complex than that. Turns out that the plastic front panel was dimming too much of the LED for the photoresistor to pick up enough light. I had to disassemble it and drill out the panel. On the upside, I made the hole just big enough to hold the photoresistor. This is much larger than lifesize:

http://rsk.imageg.net/graphics/product_images/pRS1C-2160500w345.jpg

I put that in the hole, and ran a wire to an Elk zone. I setup that zone as an analog zone, and wrote an ElkRP rule that sets digital output #180 to true if the voltage is below 10V (it's 8.8V when on), and false if it's above (it's 13.3V when off).

The mod doesn't look bad at all, especially when you consider this is in a closet and is never actually looked at. This is with zero effort to clean it up.

http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/temp/SageMod.jpg

I'm not done, of course. All I can do now is tell whether it's on or not. The next step is to use an IR blaster to send the power-toggle if it's off, and the user presses the Sage button. I've got a GlobalCache GC-100-12 that I was going to sell off, but I could use that. Seems like a waste as I only need the 1 IR command, esp since I have to buy the damn IR Learner to get that one freakin command.

But, at least it will be possible to automate yet one more thing, and remove one more point of manual entry so the family can watch TV. And most importantly, the 6 year old won't wake me up on Sat mornings because she can't get the TV to work.

(reposting this)
Well, *that* euphoria was short-lived. Every remote file I had seen for the HD100 had a power toggle, but no discrete on/off, which is why I started this project.

I just found discrete on/off codes for the Sage HDExtender. I didn't think they existed, thought it was just a toggle. So now, all I have to do is alway send a power-Extender-on command along with the Input-sage switching command and it works fine. No status lights or funky monitoring needed.

Well, at least I learned about Photoresistors and got to drill holes in perfectly functioning equipment today...

I used to spend all my time working on CQC screens. Now I've got a 2nd IRA-3 for the MBR, and am now spending my time on MX850 screens. Oh well, the right tool for each job, I suppose.

Here's what I just created. Now that I can control anything in the house, I figured I'd do a few things that are most needed - lighting, alarm, and Concerto control.

Note how "house" is on the bottom right - that's b/c the 6yr old uses this remote often, and we want to keep this away from her accidental presses.
http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/images/MX800-main.png

If you press TV, you're taken here. Pretty boring stuff, we use the TV speakers for TV, but there's a speaker on/off, and CD or XM button to change the NuVo input settings.

http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/images/MX800-TV.png

The CD/XM buttons will take you here.

http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/images/MX800-CDXM.png

Talk about lazy, this is for when we don't even want to get out of bed to change the XM station using the NuVo touchpad :-)

Finally, the "house" screen. This just has "put alarm in stay mode", plus "set maglocks" (which happens in stay mode) and entry light. I added the 2nd two mainly b/c the "put alarm in stay mode" button looked so lonely by itself.

http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/images/MX-800-house.png

so there you have it. I've used it for all of 5 mins so far, time will tell how this works out for me.

IVB,

1. Did you get the Sage HDTV recording working? How are the extenders working - do you still have the shudder?

2. A key question I have is what's the type and quality of the recorded HDTV file - and secondly, how it works locally on your Sage box vs. Extender vs. a format capable media player. That is, once recorded, what format are the files and how portable are they - for example, can you start a format-capable player (MPEG4/H.264?) on your laptop and watch recorded TV? Any DRM issues? I'm asking this because I'm wondering about the library that I would build and how it would work with other solutions 2-3 years down the line. If it's only works for Sage than that would be a downer.

3. Also, last you mentioned, you were ripping your DVDs - have you got any ripped-DVD playback happening on your Sage extenders? What's the quality like?

4. Does Sage have anything like Vista MC's WebGuide?

I know, I know, too many questions - I'll let you respond.

dc

IVB,

1. Did you get the Sage HDTV recording working? How are the extenders working - do you still have the shudder?

Nope. It's probably in this thread, but i don't actually recall having shudder. It was probably user error. My HDTV Extenders and HD-PVR are both working great.


2. A key question I have is what's the type and quality of the recorded HDTV file - and secondly, how it works locally on your Sage box vs. Extender vs. a format capable media player. That is, once recorded, what format are the files and how portable are they - for example, can you start a format-capable player (MPEG4/H.264?) on your laptop and watch recorded TV? Any DRM issues? I'm asking this because I'm wondering about the library that I would build and how it would work with other solutions 2-3 years down the line. If it's only works for Sage than that would be a downer.

Eh, sorry, no clue. Good question for the SageTV forums, i'm not sweating that as i don't hold on to TV shows once I watch them. (except for kids shows, which are ever changing and easily replaceable via purchasing DVD)

3. Also, last you mentioned, you were ripping your DVDs - have you got any ripped-DVD playback happening on your Sage extenders? What's the quality like?

Sure, tons. Quality is awesome, better than the first HTPC I had a few years back, nearly as good as the mega-HTPC with the mega-videocard I decommissioned.

4. Does Sage have anything like Vista MC's WebGuide?


I'm not familiar with WebGuide, but there's been some threads about VMC on the Sage forums lately, perhaps that would help.

Why the need for a 2nd IRA-3? Isn't the MX-850 RF enabled?

I can also say that I've "outgrown" the whole touch screen remote setup and would prefer to go back to a HTM. Creating screens & working with wifi is such a hassle. However, I'd never give it up for music control as there is simply no other way to browse and make selections without a TV on.

I prefer to leave the remote in a given room otherwise i'd never find it. Hell, I have a hard enough time finding the MX850 in the room i'm in!

I have an MX800 for the MBR, those are the screenshots above. I put the 2nd IRA-3 in the MBR so I wouldn't have to setup the MRF150 that I have, nothing like a local IR receiver. (I use the MX850 editor as it also works for the MX800, so life is a little simpler, which is why the screenshots show an MX850).

I do like the touchscreen for the kitchen, which is mainly CD/XM/lighting/irrigation/etc. I may put a 2nd touchscreen in the kids room so they shut up about asking me to play a gazillion different kids CDs (or high school musicl/hannah montana a gazillion times). But i've never liked a touchscreen in the H/T, too much of a PITA.

I understand what you did, but only have 1 thing to comment on (like you need to listen to me:p)
Another computer-based IR receiver means more overhead. I have a regular IR target in my MBR, which the wife mostly uses, to control everything and send commands to the PC to control the autopatch and a media front end. However, if the server is down she still has control over everything else (sat boxes, DVD, etc.) If I used a PC-based receiver then I would have to set input command triggers (receive this IR/send that IR) which only complicates things. Right now its only a reliable Xantech system sending to a USB-UIRT (which also feeds into the Xantech system). I know I could re-route things if needed, but I'm only gonna get grief if it happens when I'm not home; not like I have the time when I'm home either!

.....So, why did you decide to do it that way? I do see the receivers you bought are RJ45/serial compatable (which is nice), but no cheaper than Xantech units which you could even get small enough to be hidden.

I know that was long, but I'm trying to get into the mind known as IVB:D

Cut out everything but what I *think* is the relevant bit.
...However, if the server is down she still has control over everything else (sat boxes, DVD, etc.) If I used a PC-based receiver then I would have to set input command triggers (receive this IR/send that IR) which only complicates things.

Ah, that i get. what you don't see is this: I have everything connected via RS232, I have no more only IR devices left. Plus, what I have to control is a single DVD player, a Denon receiver, and a SageTV extender. I use a single PC for SageTV & CQC, and there is NO way to watch TV if that PC is down. The only thing you can do is watch a single DVD, which is pretty rare. Hence, the programming complexity isn't that big a deal, and the value-add of the logic I can setup via CQC is worth the risk.

I used to have a DirecTV STB in the MBR as the backup, but after 9 months of a SageTV/CQC combo that never went down I felt safe enough to remove that backup plan.

Has it ever gone done? Sure, once or twice, and was I in trouble? Yep. (See Netflix' current issues at time of this writing).

But what I reminded her about was that any piece of equipment can fail at any time, including the TV, but it averaged <1day per year. The value gained for the other 364 days FAR outweighed any angst for the 1 day of downtime.

There are peaks and valleys in a DIY'ers on the HA road, and i am patently in the middle of a valley. Over a 2 day period:

1) My Water sensor on the Elk blew, which (I think) resulted in a false alarm.
2) A motion sensor seems to have stopped working. Either that, or the LED is no longer working, I need to debug.

But *Most Importantly*
3) SageTV isn't working anymore. It seems to record fine, but I can't achieve playback on any extender or HTPC. I get this weird stuttering.
4) The CCTV/file server is randomly not talking to other PCs on the network. This is a newly reformatted box.

If I could just get the SageTV working, i'd be a happy guy. It is curious that all this happened over 2 days, too many different bits to be a coincidence. I did run some new wiring, but that couldn't have resulted in some of this behavior.

Sigh, guess what i'm doing today during my day off.

Hmmm, weird. My guess is some kind of critter chewing on wires. But that doesn't explain the water sensor. Or you've got a bad network switch, which would explain the PC/extender issues. The others could be coincidence...

Hmmm, weird. My guess is some kind of critter chewing on wires. But that doesn't explain the water sensor. Or you've got a bad network switch, which would explain the PC/extender issues. The others could be coincidence...

Well, I spent all day on the SageTV thing, ended up blowing away the Sage directory and re-installing. Let's see how that goes.

As I was waiting on my SageTV stuff, I updated my architecture diagram so I could see how I could possibly reduce power consumption. Geez, this is *after* downsizing. I am making headway on cutting that power draw though.

http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/images/architecture.PNG

Cool, just got the latest electric bill, it's down from 1048 Kwh to 791Kwh, so ~250Kwh and ~25% from 2 months ago. Only one data point so not enough to spike the ball, but that's certainly noticeable. And, at $0.30->$0.36/Kwh marginal rate, that's $70-$90 less (per month)

All I really did so far was turn off 1 PC (~70Kwh/Month) and replace half the incandescent light bulbs with dimmable compact fluourescent lights. I still got the other half to go, plus there's a variety of wallwart plugs that I could either leave unplugged or put on a power strip (ie, cellphone chargers). I don't know how much lower I can go, but every little bit I do saves money and reduces overall dependence on foreign energy sources.

... replace half the incandescent light bulbs with dimmable compact fluorescent lights. ...What brand of CFL's did you use? I haven't found a good CFL that provides the color temperature I want that dims well.

It's this generic brand that a dude @our local Farmers Market sells. It's called ULA, U lighting America. The color pretty much sucks, but at >$90/month I told my wife to suck it up.

I'm not allowed to change bulbs in the MBath or LivRm, though, due to the color temp issue.

It appears these are available onAmazon (http://www.amazon.com/DIMMABLE-Compact-Fluorescent-Light-ULAmerica/dp/B000NQ1RNA/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=hi&qid=1219878628&sr=1-4)

http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/images/architecture.PNG

I only check in on this thread rarely, but this is brilliant. Helps me understand exactly what you are up to. Love it.

You cocoontech.com folks know, but for the rest of you, i've been having massive issues with my Elk for the past 2 weeks. It randomly reports all motions on my expander zones as being violated. I've been arming the system in Stay mode, so only the perimeter stuff is active (thank god i've got tons of those).

Well, some progress in id'ing the reason. They all report violated right now again, it's late (1am) but I still went down to the crawlspace to figure out why.

Turns out there's no DC voltage being supplied to the motions, which are being powered through an alternate source. I've seen this happen before, when one of the wires going to them was shorted, took out the whole damn 2ndary grid.

So tomorrow (not now, i'm falling asleep) i'm going to pull out the motion DC wiring one at a time, to see which one is the short. Then i'll re-run the wire to that location.

I'll bet I did something stupid in the attic when I was fishing the new NuVo/TTS wires, which happen to be in a rather nearby location.

THIS is why I keep harping on newbies to temper their expectations about how easy/hard HA is to do. Any serious HA person is rarely satisfied with the functionality they have, but the act of expanding functionality often leads to unstableness in that which was working fine. Anybody who thinks they're going to plug-n-play HA is sorely mistaken.

I only check in on this thread rarely, but this is brilliant. Helps me understand exactly what you are up to. Love it.

Hell, i did that so I could understand exactly what I was up to :-) Glad you liked it.

it was the god damn maglock wiring that was screwy! Maglocks, damnit, that was the reason I couldn't arm my system normally for the past 2 weeks?

Here's the touchscreen I just on-wall mounted. There's an HP thin client in the closet which is directly behind this, and the monitor has audio line-in, so I was able to connect both the video, serial touchscreen, and audio.

This is *definitely* much faster response than the 3400, although given the cumulative cost of the $90 thin client & $200 touchscreen compared to a now $100 3400, I would hope so.

I'll probably sell both my 3400's now for a steal, but i'll wait until after a party @my house on 11/8 in case I decide to set up a "music kiosk".

http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/images/touchscreen.jpg

http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/images/touchscreen2.jpg

My ability to use tons of wire amazes me. Of course, the primary reason is that my house is damn easy to wire as it's 1 floor with easy access to floor & ceiling. We're having a shindig on Saturday, so I decided to move the STF-2 subwoofer to the living room, and use the 2 plasma speakers for the Pioneer that I never needed as I had my Vienna Acoustics Weberns. I needed to run another 50' run of wire, but while I was up there I figured I'd permanently mount some more speakers in the Den.

I'm closing in on using up my 2nd 500' box of Belden 4wire speaker wire, and I had about 250' of 2 wire already. How the hell did I run >1000' of speaker wire in a 1650 sqft house!

On the upside, it's amazing how much difference even a 10" $350 subwoofer makes. I'm sure i'll be bummed about watching movies in the FamRm for the next week until I can move the subwoofer back.

IVB,

That's cool! Any more info on the thin client?

IVB,

That's cool! Any more info on the thin client?

yeah, it's the one here that a little over a dozen CQC'ers bought in a group buy. (http://www.charmedquark.com/vb_forum/showthread.php?t=7222)

Well, my tolerance for software failure is clearly at an all-time low. I have a shindig coming up, and I was being cheap by just using the free SoftSqueeze player to stream Sirius via the PC.

Twice in the past 5 days it's been hanging at "Starting SqueezeCenter", which means no streaming Sirius easily. I have a pretty big & expensive party at my house on Sat night, so I just bought a Logitech Squeezebox receiver from Buy.com's eBay store for $150. Damn overnight shipping was $40 which is otherwise free, but I need this damn thing to work on Sat night, and I don't want to spend valuable drinking time debugging a piece of free software. After all, how much can I really complain about software, since it's free.

I didn't get the full Duet package with controller since I don't really need the control unit, let's hope the free perl script that allows you to config the receiver without it works as well for me as it did for others. It's a 1time need, so i'm optimistic.

Hoping it gets here on Friday, but I don't actually have much time on Fri afternoon/Sat am to do the setup, damn this better be fast.

What a great thread!

Thanks for sharing, IVB.

Seems like whenever I search on AVS or CT, I find a post from you!

New to HA (~1 year of reading), I'm looking at RadioRa, Z-wave, Elk, CQC, HomeSeer, MainLobby. I also have a 3 zone Denon AVR. I've been doing a lot of research, and no 'playing'. Ready to make my move...

In your experience, how well does CQC control the AVR? Do you have to write a lot of your own code for the control?

Keep up the great posts,

Joe/Neurorad

In your experience, how well does CQC control the AVR? Do you have to write a lot of your own code for the control?

I wrote zero code for my entire setup (not just the AVR), almost the entire thing was done via point&click. Hell, I didn't even have to remember funky command line syntax.

I'm 70% certain I used the Denon as the example for the CQC 201-Interface Editing webinar in this 100MB file (http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/downloads/IE-201_Events-202.wmv), so if you download that you could watch as I build it. If you haven't seen the CQC 101 webinar, you probably want to watch that first, (it's in my sig), there may also be some Denon stuff there.

FYI, i'm going to do a quick webex tonight ~8pm PST to show someone how to setup a weather page. If neurorad is around, check the CQC forums for the link, i'll show you how easy it is to create a screen with Denon controls.

I'm somewhat hesitant to download the G2M3 WMP plug-in. Yeah, I'm just paranoid. ;)

Maybe in a few days...have to go to bed, up at 5A CST. Working this weekend. :(

Great to hear that you've accomplished so much using CQC without writing code. Maybe after Thanksgiving I will download the free 30 day trial.

I have a VB.net for Dummies book in my Amazon cart - I'll hold off until after I try out CQC. :D

I finally got off my duff and figured out how to use the Nuvo keypad to tune Sirius Online stations (ie, control non-Nuvo tuners from a Nuvo keypad). I wrote up the howto guide for that here. (http://www.charmedquark.com/vb_forum/showthread.php?p=96206#post96206)

And oy, the pain. My 6.5 year old figured out SageTV. We currently have 40 different shows recorded, and 21 of them are her/her sisters. What the hell was I thinking by showing her how to use this?

And for those of you who couldn't even name 21 kids shows, check it out:

1) Dragon Tales
2) The Berenstein Bears
3) Maya & Miguel
4) Charlie & Lola
5) Oswald
6) Caillou
7) Imagination Movers
8) Mickey Mouse Clubhouse
9) The Backyardigans
10) Go, Diego, Go!
11) Dora the Explorer
12) Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!
13) Lazytown
14) The Wonder Pets!
15) The Upside Down Show
16) Higglytown Heroes
17) Little Bill
18) Clifford the Big Red Dog
19) Clifford's Puppy Days
20) The Cheetah Girls: One World
21) Madeline

that is wrong on so many levels...

I got bugged at some of the lights constantly going "offline" in CQC, so I decided to install ThinkEssentials and see how that went.

Oy, that was MUCH worse. Out of 22 devices, 4-6 go online/offline in CQC. In TE, 6-8 show that red question mark indicating offline. (ie, not online, just offline).

God damn, do I want to switch to a hardwired lighting protocol. I could even contemplate experimenting with RadioRA if I could get a money back guarantee if it didn't work well.

When's the remodel going to happen, IVB?

My basement remodel was pushed up unexpectedly, by a flood.

Maybe you'll get 'lucky', and an earthquake will require a remodel...;)

well, now i'm suddenly wondering whether I should hire that electrician first to run all new romex first while the access is still mega-easy. And while he's at it, maybe some LV wiring too.

damn scope creep.

RadioRa hardware would probably sell well on eBay (or Craigs List), slightly used. Basic, starter package to play with?

If you have good access from the attic, why not hardwired?

And if you did choose a hardwired lighting control system, which one would you use?

I dunno about which hardwired solution, but it would have to be one that had standard type wiring. For example, I learned on the CQC version of this thread that Centralite has the HV wiring run from circuit breaker to a centralized panel to the load, and a LV wire from the panel to the wallswitch. I don't think I like this as it forces you into using Centralite keypads at the wall.

My concern is what that would do to resale value of the house, and whether the existence of some neato tuxedo expensive lighting system would scare off buyers and reduce the price of the house. Not that i'm planning on moving anytime soon, but I don't want to take that level of "permanent" modification that eliminates my ability to pull all fancy-ass switches and plop in cheap ones if the market demands simplicity.

So, I gotta research what hardwired systems have HV wiring that is "normal", with the LV wire also run to the wallswitch. If the answer is "none", then that may kill off my lust for hardwired, at least until i'm filthy rich and don't care about resale value.

I just got my qkits QK011 temp board & sensors in the mail (get temp over RS232 - CQC driver exists). My god these things are TINY!

Here's a pic next to a business card. Honestly, the wiring is going to be thicker than the damn sensor, now I have a whole different problem to solve (how to patch up the hole in the wall without the sensor falling through).

Bye bye big ugly elk temp sensor on the wall of the MBR that the wife hates, hello tininess!
http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/temp/qk011_sensor.JPG

I dont think you specifically mentioned it, I was curious if these sensors happened to be LM34's?

So, I gotta research what hardwired systems have HV wiring that is "normal", with the LV wire also run to the wallswitch. If the answer is "none", then that may kill off my lust for hardwired, at least until i'm filthy rich and don't care about resale value.

I am planning on OnQ ALC lighting.

I just finished structured wiring which includes cat5e to every lightswitch location. The cat5e is secured to the top of the boxes, but I plan to run it through the top of each box, straight down and out the bottom (inspection is finished). That should make it easy to fish out later and make connections outside / just above the box, or use the OnQ-provided 600volt sleeve to cover the connections and leave them inside the box.

I chose this lighting solution in part for the concerns you outline about conventional house wiring. Also, because it appears to be one of the more cost-effective hardwired solutions.

This week I'm leaning toward a HomeWorks wireless system. It seems a slight step up from RadioRa.

I don't know for sure if it would be more reliable or not, compared with the RadioRa, but probably. It has the advantage of adjusting dimming level, unlike the RadioRa (so I've read) - it's not just on/off.

Certainly, I can't afford to do my whole house at one time. Perhaps in select locations, slowly adding to it over the next 20 years.

I can't understand why this HomeServe HomeWorks wireless option isn't discussed more often, aside from the price. Lutron doesn't seem to really market it well. Herdfan is the only person on the forums who has it. He said he had 1 switch that wouldn't work ~1/20 times, and had plans to replace it with a timer switch (light in a closet).

HomeWorks wireless just seems to be a no-brainer for retrofits.

I'm betting it would do pretty well in your RF-scrambling home, IVB, despite the plaster lathe.

I dont think you specifically mentioned it, I was curious if these sensors happened to be LM34's?

eh, what's an LM34?

On the lighting thing, I'll look into the ONQ/alc. I'll also look into the HomeWorks wireless. I'm just glad I went with zWave to start to demonstrate the value to the wife. Now that she likes it, she'll hopefully back the pricetags...

eh, what's an LM34?

http://www.parallax.com/Store/Sensors/TemperatureHumidity/tabid/174/CategoryID/49/List/0/Level/a/ProductID/87/Default.aspx?SortField=ProductName%2CProductName

:-) I used these on a Senior Design project for my BS EE degree 2-3 yrs ago, I couldn't believe I remembered the model number of it when I saw the image you posted - I'm guess, but its likely the same model.

well, it certainly does look very similar. I can go look to see if there's a model # on it somewhere this upcoming weekend, work is a little nutzoid before that and the spares are in the basement where it's a little chilly right now :-)

well, it certainly does look very similar. I can go look to see if there's a model # on it somewhere this upcoming weekend, work is a little nutzoid before that and the spares are in the basement where it's a little chilly right now :-)

Ehh, doesnt matter a great deal to me. But if you did know what model they were, you could certainly pick up quite a few for cheap @ ~$4 ea. and have them all over the place if you wanted.

I used them on a Microsoft developmental 8086 board - all you really need is the A/D converter and some code to make some adjustments to the scaling.

Do you play DVD's from a hard drive based system? If so, what software do you use to play them, and to integrate the system into CQC? Same question for audio. I would assume that you would have to have a video card with component out to distribute the video to your displays. Thanks.

Yes, I do that. I use SageTV HDExtenders hooked up via component to my TVs, and a SageTV/CQC server. In one location, the extender is actually at the TV. In another location, all equipment is in a media closet. Both locations have an IRA-3 IR receiver, so I can control via CQC.

I used to use an HTPC, CQC's Media Manager for cataloging, and theatertek DVD software for playback, and it was *very* tightly integrated with CQC. But now, i'm moving towards using SageTV only as the TV display mechanism, and laptops or my touchpanel to render CQC. As such, the need for CQC to display DVD info is no longer there.

At this point, the primary means of integration is more of a "back-end" integration. That is, when I press the pause button on my remote, CQC intelligently determines what is being listened to or watched in that room, and routes the command appropriately. I have the SageTV Extender, a Marantz DVD player with RS232, and the CQC mp3 player that are all under control. The ability to have a single pause button work against whatever i'm currently watching/listening is really cool.

IVB,

I know you use RF remotes (Can't recall what model) mostly now, is there a lag time from when you press a button to the command actually working...how long does it take to pause after you press the pause button? I am looking to move everything centrally and will most likely get an RF remote and run everything through CQC/SageTV and this is one question I have.

Thanks

Actually, I switched to a local IR receiver ever since I ditched the HTPC and moved to SageTV Exenders. But you're right, when I had an HTPC in the media closet, I used an MX850->MRF350->USBUIRT solution.

There was nearly zero latency, it was pretty damn fast. The big issue was that if the MX850 had even slightly weak batteries, the code being xmitted would vary and i'd have to hit the button twice to get the signal. Not an issue as long as I kept fresh batteries in it.

Since I needed to run new wiring after removing the HTPC, I decided it was just as easy to run a local IRA-3 IR receiver as moving the USB-UIRT to the server. And obviously a local IR reciever is mounds better then the repeater, so that's why I moved.

Oy, positively frustrating day HVAC wise. My system has been non-integrated for 12-18 months, ever since I added a thermo to my kids room and put in an aprilaire 8818 distro panel.

Well, i thought i got lucky, i was mentally prepared to run a new wire which would have taken hours. I started pulling the old wire out, and realized there was a kink/break in the wire 18" into the wall. I happened to have more than that in slack in the wall, so I got that dealt with. I ringed out all the wiring, and confirmed that it was copasetic. "Bada Bing", i thought, this'll be a quick fix.

That's where the luck stopped. First, I somehow shorted the 24VAC transformer feeding the Aprilaire, so I had to go to RatShack to get another one. Then, no matter what combo of wiring I tried (just thermo 1. Thermo 1 & 2. Thermo 2. Using 8818 distro panel. Don't use 8818 distro panel.), it just don't wanna work.

I really want to get this damn HVAC back integrated, this inability to turn it on from outside the house is killing me. Cranking it when we got 10 mins away from our house was one of our favorite bits about the system, and it's been down for too long. I don't get much of an oppty to do this, i still have 1 week off work, i may fedex a new 8811 from somewhere online to see if that's it.

I did not think rat shack had 24VAC transformers with enough oooompf to run HVAC. Can you give me the spec of the transformer you got? A 40VA should do it. A 50VA would do it without cracking a sweat.

Also, if I remember correctly, if you interrupt the distribution panel mid call for heat or cooling it may lock up. There is a re-boot button. Press it and walk away for ten minutes. It can take that long to sort its self out.
Are your zone dampers powered closed or open?

It's a 24VAC, 1A output. By my quick math, 1A = 120VA, so i thought it was plenty.

The bigger issue is that i pulled the 8818 out of the equation, powered the 8870 directly from the furnace's 24VAC (like it would be with only 1 thermo), then hooked up the comm lines direct to a single 8870, and still no love.

But perhaps I should leave the 8870 offline for 10 mins, then plug it back in, then wait 10 mins, to see if that'll clear it all out.

Ooops, sorry, I was thinking of a different distrobution panel. However, if you have more than one low voltage transformer in the circuit make sure they are all in phase. If not, the smallest one will loose out to the larger one and burn out. I suggest re-reading the installation manual and double checking all your wiring.

Success! Of sorts, anyhow.

After re-re-rewiring and also getting a 2nd 8811 protocol adapter, i've now gotten 1 8870 to work if I wire directly to the 8811. Well, sorta, it'll work with my laptop's RS232 port or via the Elk, but not either of the servers. Clearly some form of com port setup issue. But at least it's functional.

Either tonight or tomorrow, i'll get brave and put the 8818 distro panel back into the mix, then if that works i'll see if i can get the 2nd 8870 to work. If that all works via the Elk, then i'll see if I can get it to work via CQC and those fussy serial ports, which is what I really want as there's some add'l fxnlty possible.

Either tonight or tomorrow, i'll get brave and put the 8818 distro panel back into the mix, then if that works i'll see if i can get the 2nd 8870 to work.

Hoho, schawing, it works! Well, it didn't in the beginning, it turns out the issue was that I had to strip the CAT5 A+/A-/B+/B- signal wiring @the 8870 waaay back, and I mean something crazy like 1/2 inch. Once I did that, it all started talking. It's still only talking to the Elk or my laptop, something crazy is going on with my server's RS232 ports, but at this point I'm content.

Well, by "content" I mean that my LSI RAID5 replacement card just showed up via Fedex, so it's time to see if I can get that working. All our shows are starting up over the next few weeks, and given that we have 3 HD OTA tuners, 1 DirecTV-HD tuner, and only 1 DirecTV-SD tuner, I suspect we'll be out of hard disk space very quickly. I need to get that 4TB array up quickly.

Oho, and the gifts keep on coming! Thanks to jrlewis and his help giving me a macro, i've added 3 buttons on my webpage to modify the HVAC. His macro-code was a wide-open, change anything, but all I had to do was clone it once per field that I want to change, and hardcode the driver & field names into it. Since it's been done inside the macro, even if someone bypasses the authentication, all they can do is turn my HVAC on & off. Not that much fun, not that much of a risk.

Check it out, here's the image. I tested it on my cellphone, works fine.

There is one issue, and that is that pressing the button takes you to a blank page. So I have to hit the back-arrow, then refresh. I'm looking into how to make that go away, but for a quick&dirty 1 hour thing, this works just fine!

http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/temp/hvac_form.JPG


NOTE:The last button "turn on and set to 75", is strictly my "coming home" sequence. I'll hit that when i'm 10 mins away from home so the house is nice & warm when we walk in, then i'll use the Elk rules to automatically turn down to 71 once the system is disarmed.

god-damn-p-o-s. Huge thanks to jkmonroe for spotting this and pointing it out to me on the chat room, but get this review on newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16816118087 (search for user yettavr6), claiming that

"Doesn't work with the x16 slot on intel boards. I tried it in two different intel boards with onboard video. The card is detected by the system, shows the BIOS screen, and immediately says "No Hard Drives Detected. Software RAID can not be configured". At first i thought i had either a faulty card or cable, so i RMA'd it. Same thing. I also made sure the boards and this card has the latest BIOS. Also tried 3 different brands of drives."


Who the hell makes a card that doesn't work with Intel brand motherboards with built-in-video? Thank god i didn't get the intel brand server mobo i was contemplating.

I emailed them asking for some relief since it's clearly unreturnable to amazon.com, but this was an undisclosed limitation that was their error. I've spent dozens of hours getting this to work, oy am i bugged.

Well life gets a little more confusing, hopefully in the save-money direction.

My zWave has been irritating me lately, a neighbor must have added something wireless, so I was torn between getting into Lutron RadioRA and getting the Elk-zWave controller for $300. Based on a tip on the cocoontech forums, I pulled the 900 MHz Baby Monitor plug out of the wall. We never use it anyhow, I don't know why we still have it plugged in.

Well, it seems to have helped. This weekend I may go through the major hassle of blowing away the whole zWave network, re-adding each module, and re-teaching CQC to see if I can get it more stable.

Good thing this happened too, I just ordered a dual PCIe 16x slot mobo and 4GB of RAM as a hail-mary to see if I can get the LSI RAID card working, and spent a little too much $$ in Vegas during CES, so I need to save some $$ somewhere...

God how much do I hate building systems now, this sucks! I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it! My life is too damn busy to deal with stupid B.S. like what you see below.

I got a gigabyte dual PCIe mobo from newegg and spent hours trying to get it working, only to find out that it too is incompatible with the LSI card. I sent LSI Support a totally bitchy email begging them to give me the name of one board that works, they did (SUPERMICRO MBD-C2SBC), so I just got that off NewEgg, and RMA'ed my brand new gigabyte. That wasn't the only issue - the gigabyte was refusing to acknowledge my USB floppy drive so I couldn't install the gigabyte & intel RAID drivers. And seriously, who wants to buy an internal floppy drive just for this one install, I got the USB which works in legacy mode with all my other mobo's so I wouldn't have to deal with this crap.

Man, if I had the $$, there's zero doubt in my mind that I'd throw it at Vidabox and get a 7TB CQC/media server with the BluRay auto-rip thingey from them, and let them deal with all this B.S. I swear i've spent 6 hours on this in the past 5 days, at least 50 hours all-in with the LSI card, and I'm about to go back to square zero.

But of course, I can't go back to square zero this weekend as newegg won't be here until next Tuesday, but I also gotta pack up this mobo and send it back.

The big issue is that i've only got 1.5TB for DVDs & TV on the current RAID, and all the TV shows are starting up, so i've got to be super-diligent and make sure the 21 kids shows don't suck up all the space. I damn well better not have to delete some movies and then have to re-rip them when I finally have this array built.

Cut back on the kids' shows.

But keep recording Yo Gabba Gabba - caught an episode last week.

I swear I heard some Flaming Lips during that show. Pretty trippy music featured!

How much is the VidaBox option, installed?

How much is the VidaBox option, installed?

More than anybody on avsforum would spend. MSRP for 2TB with BluRay is $7K, I think the 7TB version runs around $10K.

But, for anyone who just wants something that works, has a drop-in-BluRay or DVD and auto-rip setup, and has the $$, it's a hell of an option. I saw it live at CES, it's really nice.

More than anybody on avsforum would spend. MSRP for 2TB with BluRay is $7K, I think the 7TB version runs around $10K.

But, for anyone who just wants something that works, has a drop-in-BluRay or DVD and auto-rip setup, and has the $$, it's a hell of an option. I saw it live at CES, it's really nice.

I heard YOU were selling those at CES. How many orders did you take, IVB? Did you have a blast?

I heard YOU were selling those at CES. How many orders did you take, IVB? Did you have a blast?

Heh, yeh, that's where I got hooked on them. But alas, I was just the automation specialist in the Vidabox booth, as they needed manpower if folks wanted to know details about what was possible. I had about 5 minutes of cocktail smarts, after which I would either go into the automation side (aka, CQC) or pass off to someone who actually knew about the Vidabox side.

They were "off" the floor in a suite at the LV Hilton, so it wasn't a madhouse, but there were still a ton of folks interested. It was all pro's though, so no "sales" at the actual event. I'm sure Vidabox has a good pipeline of leads now, i'll be content to drool from the sidelines.

I'm sure Dean would give you a great deal on one. He seems like such a friendly, sincere guy. Good to hear he (and VidaBox) got some traffic at CES.

How the hell did "swap my server mobo so that i can use a $300 LSI RAID card" turn into "spend $600 so I can also uplevel to 4GB of RAM, get a 15-bay case so I can get up to 7TB if need be, and an 850W power supply"? It's all coming via UPS tomorrow, let us all pray.

I'm really hoping this mobo works - it's got integrated video and 5 PCI slots (although no PCIe slots), so I can put my MOXA serial, M-Audio, and VBox Cats Eye HD-tuner card back in, with 2 slots left over.

I'm also using the E6850 3.0GHz that I have in another PC, so if that all works fine, this would be a pretty nice server.

Or it could all fall flat on it's face.

Well, i'm finally getting places, and I have a distinct feeling this might be a "ends justify the means" where I forget the pain of setup.

I got the LSI RAID working, I documented my lessons learned here. (http://www.charmedquark.com/vb_forum/showthread.php?p=100503#post100503) I have a feeling that this was 99.9% nooby error, .1% manufacturer. I won't repeat what's in that thread, but the system is currently at 15 hours of initialization and it's at 28%. It'll be done sometime on Monday, after which I gotta do a format, which'll be another 2-3 days.

A few cool bits about the new rig:
1) The new case I bought (Antec Twelve Hundred) is an absolute BEAST. It's meant for high-end gaming systems with the watercooling thingeys, so it's got tons of room. Plus the 12 external 5.25" drivebays come with 3 hard drive cages that each hold 3 HDs, and have 120mm fans dedicated to them, and there's 2 rear 120mm fans and a 200mm top fan, so the sucker runs cool. I think my CPU is somewhere around 28deg C with 5 hard drives in it, which is probably 15deg cooler than it used to be.

2) The mobo has 5 PCI slots. This means I can put the Vbox HD tuner, Moxa 8way serial, and M-Audio Delta 410, with 2 slots left over.

3) The mobo has 4 RS232 slots on it. Well, one external and 3 headers. And, I have a 4way PCIe serial card that I got b/c I was jammed full beforehand. Between the 8 Moxa RS232, the 4way PCIe serial card, and these 4, I can sell (or re-use) one of the IP-serial devices I have. Nothing like having native RS232 ports.

But, two bummers:
1) I had to disable the mobo's ICH9R to get the LSI to work, so I no longer have RAID1 on the boot disk. Not a huge issue, this should be a relatively stable machine, so I can try my hand at Acronis TrueImage or similar.

2) I didn't want to waste another 5 days and blow another $200 on XP 64bit, so I'm stuck with the 2TB limit. I had to split up my 3TB into 2 logical arrays of 1.4TB each, i'm not sure how expansion will work if I opt to add another 1-2 1TB hard drives. Boy I hope that works fine.

But, progress anyhow, *finally*.

after which I gotta do a format, which'll be another 2-3 days.

You might be surprised. I'll bet it does it in less than 30 seconds!

well, i am wondering whether i can just do a quickformat since i just did this 50+ hour thing, or whether I gotta do the big mega-format.

Many RAID cards run through even a full Windows format extremely quickly.

well how about that, you are quite right. It did a full windows format in <2 minutes.

For once during this server build, a pleasant surprise!

It did a full windows format in <2 minutes.

Well, I lost my bet but I'm glad it was better than you expected.

jesus life just got more complicated, and I brought it all on myself.

I told my 7yr old that I bought her "Ruby" by the Kaiser Chiefs, and was going to play it for her. She wanted to learn how to use the kitchen touchpanel to queue it up. It's too high up for her, but I swear she was faster than that "Heroes" blonde girl in getting a stepstool. So of course, proud Papa shows her how to use the CD screen that mom (and mom's friends) thinks is pretty easy to find & add-to-queue. I had Blondie's greatest hits playing ($5 for the album on last Friday's Amazon mp3 download deal), so it went to the end of the queue. She wanted to listen to it NOW, so I showed her how to skip ahead.

Her response: "Daddy, that took too many clicks. Why can't I just press one button and have it play first, before your other stuff"?

Good god. Now I need to take UI/information architecture direction from my kid, who's already a pro at SageTV and adding favorites by herself, bumping my stuff down the list. What type of monster have I created.

Can you create a "daughter" Genre, associate all her music to also be in that Genre and put a button to select Daughter? She can then navigate her stuff.

yeah, I already did that. But, she wants to bump my stuff to the bottom of the queue so her stuff is first.

I'm going to suck it up and create a 2nd CD source, and allocate that to her. Then she can listen to whatever she wants in her own room, and leave me to my Blondie/TalkingHeads/etc!

jesus life just got more complicated, and I brought it all on myself.

I told my 7yr old that I bought her "Ruby" by the Kaiser Chiefs, and was going to play it for her. She wanted to learn how to use the kitchen touchpanel to queue it up. It's too high up for her, but I swear she was faster than that "Heroes" blonde girl in getting a stepstool. So of course, proud Papa shows her how to use the CD screen that mom (and mom's friends) thinks is pretty easy to find & add-to-queue. I had Blondie's greatest hits playing ($5 for the album on last Friday's Amazon mp3 download deal), so it went to the end of the queue. She wanted to listen to it NOW, so I showed her how to skip ahead.

Her response: "Daddy, that took too many clicks. Why can't I just press one button and have it play first, before your other stuff"?

Good god. Now I need to take UI/information architecture direction from my kid, who's already a pro at SageTV and adding favorites by herself, bumping my stuff down the list. What type of monster have I created.

I am hesitant to centralize ALL of my equipment to a out-of-the-way or closet type rack for reasons such as this. Even though CD media probably wont be with us a whole lot longer, physical media in general will still be around for a while (BD, DVD, etc). That said, I have stated in my other thread, that I want to keep some equipment central to those rooms in which they are used (ie. PS3) so I dont have to go to the equipment rack to load a game or BD.

You stated above that you were using the Kitchen touchpanel to control playing the CD. I have seen pictures of your equipment/server room area, and (maybe Im wrong) dont see you going down there to load a disc into a changer/player in an equipment rack. Where did you load the CD to have it play / integrated with your system?

Just trying to get a feel for how to lay out hardware in my house - what to move, what stays, etc.

all my CDs (and DVDs) are ripped, so I don't bother with physical media anymore.

Hence, if I just add a button for "Kids music", or perhaps a custom screen for them, plus give them their own dedicated CD "player" via my M-Audio Delta 410 multi-audio-output card, it'll be all good...

all my CDs (and DVDs) are ripped, so I don't bother with physical media anymore.

Hence, if I just add a button for "Kids music", or perhaps a custom screen for them, plus give them their own dedicated CD "player" via my M-Audio Delta 410 multi-audio-output card, it'll be all good...

Ok, so when you said, "I told my 7yr old that I bought her "Ruby" by the Kaiser Chiefs, and was going to play it for her." My first impression was a physical CD, that would have have to insert into a player somewhere, either to play directly, or to rip.. Obviously you likely meant digital download. What about new DVDs or BD movies? Or have you somehow done away with ALL physical media all together, possibly use something like Netflix for new releases and just stream them?

We (my wife and I) find ourselves buying newly released movies quite often - usually either in DVD or BD format, and use the PS3 for these. Do you follow my desire to keep such hardware remotely located in say the living room? Or is there a train that I am missing?

Yeah, ruby happened to be a digital download, although I just bought a ton of used CDs so I'll be ripping them shortly.

I rip regular DVDs, BluRay is the one hole in the system. I currently have a BR player only in the H/T room, and my Denon 3805 handles the video switching for that. I only currently own 2 BluRays due to the hassle and the cost, but the SageTV HDExtender does a pretty good upscaling job with regular DVDs.

I am hoping that SageTV figures out how to do BluRay playback via the extenders soon, I know they're working on it. If not, I may end up getting that Netflix-enabled LG BluRay player, so I can do both V.O.D. and BluRay.

The most vexing HA problems are sometimes cured by non-HA paths.

I started modifying the GUI to accomodate my daughters desires and 2nd CD source. But the issue is that she's not allowed to listen to all the music we have. I started to learn about password protection/etc, then said "screw it".

She now has her own iPod Nano (blue chromatic, my did she squeal) & a dock, and the only songs on it are ones she & her sister are allowed to listen to. She can dance the night away listening to Katy Perry, Pussycat Dolls, Lady GaGa, and Kaiser chiefs in her room with her sister, and I got my Blondie & Talking Heads back.

And no GUI changes or password protection required. Life is good, all I had to do is throw money at the problem :-)

The towel has been thrown in the ring, I've tagged out, i've come off the field for a set of downs, i'm benching it for a period, <insert other sports metaphor here>.

I tried swapping the current LSI card with the RMA one (i haven't shipped it back yet), same slow write performance. Read speed is just fine, so this must be a firmware/other setting, but I just can't deal anymore. I just sent Vidabox.Steve an email taking him up on that Highpoint RAID card offer for $750, then figured i'd buy a 5th 1TB drive and WHS while i'm at it. Plus, my HDHomeRun stopped workiing again, so I'm going to get 1 more Vbox Cats Eye for the server.

Assuming this whole disgustingly expensive experiment works, my server will be ~$3800 plus shipping. My wife can never know that, as I bought this stuff over time. Here's the replacement costs (i paid more for some stuff as i bought earlier)

Case: $170
Mobo: $150
RAM: $50 (4GB)
CPU: $200 (E6850)
850W Power Supply: $180
400GB Boot HD: $90
5 1TB Seagate enterprise level hard disks for RAID5: 5 * $170 = $850
2 1TB Seagate hard disks for RAID1: 2 * $170 = $340
RAID card: $750
WHS: $100
2 VBox: 2 * $130 = $260
PVR500: $150 (guess for what the replacement will cost)
HD-PVR: $200
USB Modem: $50
Moxa 8way Serial: $50
M-Audio Delta 410: $170 (for the 1010LT)

$3800 in parts and I still had to build the god damn thing myself? Man, this is one expensive hobby, puts those pro boxes that feel like they're so expensive into perspective...

Little confused about your choice of WHS plus RAID. Aren't you going to have double redundancy and lose a ton of storage?

Assuming this whole disgustingly expensive experiment works, my server will be ~$3800 plus shipping. My wife can never know that,

I thought the underline was a link, perhaps to a youtube vid of somebody freaking out, or the Psycho shower scene. ;)

She doesn't read this thread? I guess I understand - my wife doesn't want to hear anything about HA. :)

shocker of shockers: An $850 retail hw RAID card is MUCH faster than a $300 retail hw RAID card.

I got the new Highpoint yesterday, ordered a 5th 1TB HD and another vidabox card while i was at it. I got the machine setup, 4TB RAID5 array initialized, installed WHS today, formatted the machine, and file copies are blazingly fast. I setup a GPT partition via the Server2003 back-end portion of WHS, so now i have a nice 3.8TB drive. (that's what 5x1TB Raw turns out to be). The MOXA & VBoxx cards work fine under WHS, that's nice too.

I'm reluctant to say the LSI sucks as I know 95% of my issues with it were user-created. And reads were smoking fast on that card, it was just the writes that were the problem, i'm sure it was some firmware setting but I couldn't hack it anymore. Plus, it was an 8way card, and I knew i'd fill up 8 drives within 6 months, the highpoint is a 16way which is nice.

I'm about to install SageTV-WHS version on it, and also CQC. I have a feeling this might take a while to get everything done correctly, this box has a lot of stuff setup (lantronix com redirector, squeezebox, etc).

The one big downer is that the M-Audio Delta 410 won't work on WHS. I'm not sure how crushing a defeat that is, I may explore USB audio options to see how that works. Obviously i'd love to find drivers that work for it, but i'm not holding my breath. I tried the XP and the W2K ones, no love.

Well, with any luck, in 36 hours i'll have a new Sage Server & CQC server.

well jeez; after hours & hours of pounding on the hw side of things, the setup of a new RAID1 and a migration of nearly all software over to the new PC barely took any time at all. I even left the house from 12:30->8:00pm to go to the zoo & cheesecake factory with the kids. I got CQC, SageTV, Lantronix Redirector, 2 Vidabox cards, Hauppauge HD-PVR & DirecTV-HD via USBUIRT, and DirecTV-SD via serial all working just fine.

Well, I did have 3 issues:
1) I can't seem to get the US Robotics modem to show up in the MyComputer.Properties list, even though I added the driver and it seemed to recognize it all.
2) I completely forgot how to setup SqueezeCenter for the receiver I have. Oy, this'll kill me.
3) I had to pull a 2GB stick out; turns out this mobo is all hinky with 2x2GB. Now I just have the 1 2GB stick, but whatever, it works, i'll take it.

But hey, those are 2 minor issues, I was prepared for much worse. Heck, I can't believe it's basically done & migrated. There's just a few odds & ends left to take care of related to the re-do (ie, move some devices off IP serial server and onto direct serial connection now that I got the MOXA back in service, consolidate random data bits onto the RAID5 & RAID1 that I got setup. I can do that over VNC while I watch L&O with the wife...

and first major niceness of the new box and craploads of space:

I'm just sitting back, watching my ripped Dark Knight BluRay DVD via my Sage HD200 extender! There's a slight stutter on the HD100, but the HD200 is faster and can handle it.

Looks like these rips aren't 100% consistent, it's dependent on the disc. I've been trying to get my Iron Man BluRay to work, but it don't wanna. I'm using AnyDVD-HD to rip, and tsmuxer to convert it. Well, with Dark Knight, I didn't even need to convert it, the BluRay rip worked fine, i just had to pick the .m2ts file that was the movie. It was 32GB, so i'm pretty sure i got the right one.

If I can get this working reliably, i may very well sell off the Sony BD350 I got as I'll just stick with ripped BluRay.

Really, how do you go wrong when you have a single GUI for TV, DVD, BluRay, and you don't even need a touchscreen or alternate piece of energy-sucking equipment in the room to do it. This freaking rocks.

Little confused about your choice of WHS plus RAID. Aren't you going to have double redundancy and lose a ton of storage?

I use WHS + RAID as well. I don't like WHS's built-in redundancy at all (I don't use it), but I do like some of WHS's other features.

ooops, sorry, didn't notice Amir's post.

WHS doesn't come with RAID, it uses drive pooling, and you can optionally duplicate. I bypass the WHS console in it's entirety, I just use it for the Server 2003 backbone. Higher limit on network connections, and some other stuff i've read about but not tried.

I had no choice really, as I have a 5x1TB RAID5, so a 4TB logical array. WHS won't recognize a drive larger than 2TB in the pool, so I had to keep it out of there. I converted to a GPT partition via drivemgmt.msc, then formatted it.

Plus, as far as I know, WHS offers no protection for the system partition - which I find silly.

there was this interesting thread about a CQC'er trying to restore his Vista 64 system from WHS (http://www.charmedquark.com/vb_forum/showthread.php?t=7850), with some nearly frightening results.

And, I just got IronMan working. The basic process (for me) is:

- Rip DVD with AnyDVD-HD. ~1 hour (it's 43GB)
- Find the biggest .m2ts file above, see if it works as-is, if so you're done.
- If not, use tsmuxer to DEmux (aka, extract) the audio & video tracks. ~10 mins
- Use eac3to pull out the DTS audio track. ~25 mins
- Use tsmuxer to re-combine the video & DTS track (from above). ~10 mins.

So either 1 hour or 1:45 from end-end, and now I can really distribute BluRay. Bada Bing!

Well, I just ran into the first potentially unsolvable limitation of an overcomplexified solution that may require 2 PCs running as CQC servers to address my wacky audio needs.

Specifically, I use CQC to :
- play doorbell.wav through the Elk speakers. This requires the windows default device.
- play Text To Speech good morning announcement through the Concerto/Niles speakers. This also uses the windows default device.

As I don't think I can make PlayWav or TTS use non-default devices, it looks like i'll need 2 PCs. Well, assuming I don't want to route the default output to both the Elk speaker amp and the Concerto, and use relays with the Elk to open the circuit I don't want. That feels like an excessively brittle path.

Not a huge issue, as I have that CCTV server, and I suppose if I ever switch to a CCTV DVR box I can use one of those mega-thin clients to handle this.