New House, because I love this stuff. - Page 4

Yeah it's a little much but I used to work with a guy who cut everything too short and it drove me nuts. I will tie up the slack below the racks. I cut it 1.5 times the height of the rack.

lol, I appreciate that

Work fell on me! I am not really a morning person and had to leave for work at 6am all week and worked 60 hours. I finally have recouped and will be posting new pictures soon. Move to Texas, for double you can get an estate. Or you could just spend what we did and buy some more toys. :-)

We got some of our new furniture this weekend, which means the stuff that was supposed to go in the media room with finally be going back into the media room.

I re-wired my power strip so that every other outlet was on a different circuit. This took forever.

This is how it turned out. I have some of the small stuff (modem, router, ect.) on switched UPS outlets so that I can power cycle them when I am out of the house is something goes down. The other stuff, is just on UPS.

I finally got one of the baluns working. I originally terminated all of the cat-6 with EZ-RJ-45 ends and they don't seat properly in the baluns. Only the cheap monoprice ends seem to work well. Horrible!!! My fingers are tired. Time to redo a lot of ends tonight.

I've got to order a new screen this week. I have been going back and forth on what to get. I know that I want to order a Stewart, but I am unsure of the size, screen material and aspect ratio. We will be sitting 12' from the screen.

Materials:
G3 Firehawk - This is the screen I have owned for years.
Studiotek 130 - Thinking about this since it is a dedicated room this time around. Would allow larger screen with lower output on the projector.
Studiotek 100 - The ultimate reference screen, no sparkling. Low Gain.

Aspect & Size
I don't own a lens currently, but I have seen more and more affordable stuff out there.

16:9 - Thinking of 100" - 106".

Scope - Thinking 110".


Please tell me what you think.

For anyone using Atlona baluns. Atlona recommends using cat-7, then cat-6, then cat-5. We ran audioquest brand Cat-6 and attempted to terminate with several brands of cat-6 tips. Could not get the baluns to work with EZ-RJ45-cat6 ends or ideal (home depot) brand cat-6 ends and would only work with poor quality picture using monoprice cat-6 ends. I tried ideal (home depot brand) cat-5 single piece tips and worked immediately and with excellent results.

Thanks, much appreciated.

Office TV is complete. Wire termination and management takes sooo long.

These are the baluns that are behind every TV.

I also mounted my computer monitors. Still need to run all the wires. Nice to have an office kind of put together.

Family Room is still under construction. Need to get some help to lift the TV down to re-terminate the baluns.

I normally don't like TVs above fireplaces, but you can see from this picture that the family is open to the kitchen and we like to watch the news while we cook/ eat/ clean.

Well its been slow going lately. I've been working long hours on this project, but the rack has been incredibly time consuming. I spent a whole day on routing power. 2 days on terminating, labeling, and heat shrinking the cat-6 lines only within the rack. There are 23 data lines within the rack. This does not include the data I still need to bring into the rack from the wires that go to other areas of the home. I am going to need another switch. Ugh...... I would love to find a 48-port that is a little quieter than my 24. Lastly, I got the HDMI's run in the rack. I still have to do speaker wires, comm (RS-232 and IR) lines, component video, composite video, stereo audio lines, balun lines. Would love to be finished with this thing by the end of the weekend.


Ugh......

This is the number of analog lines in the system. (32) pairs.

I've been stalled for a few hours trying to find a good source for RS-232 pinout and conversion. I am using the tips pictured above for Rs-232 lines between the controllers and the equipment. Uses a cat-5, which allows termination to length.


To build an 8-wire RS232/RS485 serial cable for use with the Nema-4 enclosure, use a standard CAT-5 networking cable to act as the extension between the computer and the radio modem. (This cable will be carrying RS232 signals, not ethernet signals.)

Assemble both the yellow and green adapter according to this table:

DB9 pin RS-232
Signal Name RS-485
Signal Name Wire color
(Adapter) RJ45 pin # Wire color
(Ethernet cable)
1 DCD Orange 2 Orange
2 RXD TX- Red 4 Blue
3 TXD RX- Yellow 6 Green
4 DTR Blue 1 White/Orange
5 GND GND White 8 Brown
6 DSR - - -
7 RTS RX+ Black 3 White/Green
8 CTS TX+ Green 5 White/Blue
9 PWR(RI) PWR* Brown 7 White/Brown
When the adapters are assembled, test the cable by attaching the loopback plug into the yellow adapter and the CAT-5 cable, and the green one into the PC and the CAT-5 cable.
Use the loopback test in the X-CTU software to determine that packets can be transmitted correctly.
Remove the loopback adapter and attach the radio modem.

This is a great link!

http://www.digi.com/support/kbase/kb...tdetl.jsp?kb=3

http://www.firgelliauto.com/default.php?cPath=104

These are pretty cool. I will end up using one to make the automated lens slide for the projector in the media room. I have decided on a 115" 1.35 scope screen from Stewart.

Well I made some more progress this weekend. Here are some photos.

This is the theater. I have decided on a CIH system. My wife told me I could either have some Martin Logan Ethos speakers or the lens for Christmas. Going for the speakers. Lens will come with the construction of the theater.

The parts shelfs are looking more and more empty.

The rack is half way running.

This was a pain. Made all these wires still need to zip tie.