Well, its been almost 2 weeks since getting in the new place. At least the main room is set up now and functional. I have around 500 of my movies ripped to the hard drive. The dedicated Media Center / Home Seer machine is tucked away behind the entertainment center, and has a small fan blowing cool air into the confined space. Motherboard Monitor reports temperatures well within tolerance.
One thing I didn't mention, as of yet, it is a manufactured home. Not really what my dream home was to begin with, but it's a start at least. It is just shy of 2,000 Square Ft of living space. Its a 3 bedroom, with 2 of the bedrooms being huge! One is 28 x 13 and the other is 28 x 14. The 3rd bedroom is smaller at 14' x 12', which is still a decent size. It was built in 2003, and is built to the same hurricane specifications as a standard site built home. In fact this home survived hurricane Wilma a couple years ago, that took the complete roof of of a good friend of mines town house.
The floors in the Living room, Kitchen, Dining Room & Breakfast nook are all real hardwood, and not laminate. That was a major plus when I looked at it! There is even around 30 extra planks in the shed if something happens and I have to replace a plank here or there.
I found this through a friend when the foreclosure papers were started. I went to the office and spoke with them, before it was placed on the market. I purchased it for $32,000, and it is appraised in this area at around $75,000. For anything other than a manufactured home, in the Palm Beach County area, with the same square footage, would run around the $300,000 range!
One major advantage so far has been the raised floor. The crawl space underneath is ideal for running wire from room to room for Cat5 and such, and was able to run the surround sound speakers to the back of the living room like that. There was an existing CD Player / AM/FM / Intercom built into the wall in between the kitchen and the living room. Speaker wires from it, are already are ran to each room :blink:
! I am going to rip that system out, and place the touch screen in that location, as it is like 4 feet from the Media Center / Home Seer machine.
What is anyone best advice on how to run the monitor, as far as still being able to use the Media Center PC portion on the TV, and the Home Seer screens on the touch screen? Dual GFX cards, Extended desktop ect? I do not want to run into the hassles of having programs pop up on the wrong screen ect. I have never tried to run 2 totally different displays of of a single computer before, so any tips are greatly appreciated! Oh, the existing GFX card in the machine has dual DVI's out. I am running one to the TV, and the other I will use the VGA converter that came with to go from the DVI to a standard VGA cable for the touch screen.
Here is a photo of the living room and media center setup in it's current state. There is still quite a bit to do, but it's getting there! (The coffee table arrived with a huge crack in the top of it, so only the matching end tables are set up ect. I know how everyone loves photo's, so I figured I would post one to get started, and update as necessary
The photo is a compilation of 8 separate images aligned in Photoshop, and auto blended. If you havent used that feature in Photoshop CS2, it is an amazing tool!
The downside of this is it makes everything look so small! You would never know that the main sofa is 8' long, and that the TV is a 65" Rear Projection! The size of the living room is 21' x 14'.
And YES, the Ceiling fan, and other lights in the living room are the first things in the house to be automated, and are all set up. The other is a motion sensor that turns on the light above the stove, if you come down the hall in the dark towards the kitchen
Gotta love the little Socket Rockets for little things like that
More to be automated for sure as time goes on.
