RandyKnight
Active Member
I've already been littering the HA forum with my questions but thought I should introduce myself officially. I'm a professional computer geek (database guy actually) just getting into HA. I've wanted to go down this road for several years but have always been in existing homes, etc. where it wasn't feasible to do everything I wanted to do.
However, we're in the process of designing our "dream home" that we plan to break ground on in the next few months, so now is the time for me to learn all I can and do all the right things in that house in terms of pre-wiring and so forth.
As part of this process, I'm putting in as much HA as I can in my existing home ... I'd rather learn/play here so I can make the right decisions in the new house.
What I currently have in place is mainy home theater related but I hope to extend this into a lot of HA stuff as well. The heart of my system at this point is an MCE 2005 box in my combination family / home theater room. We use this for all media including Dish Network, CDs (ripped to disk) DVDs (also ripped), DVR (IR emitter controlling DIsh network box), etc. We also have a Linksys MCE Extender in the master bedroom in addition to a 2nd Dish network receiver.
Recently (as in this week), I got a few UPB devices, UPStart, and a trial version of HomeSeer 2.0 w/ the UPB and MCE plug-ins going. I'm leaning towards UPB as the main lighting control (see my threads in the HA forum for more discussion of this) system and the Elk M1 as the controller.
My plan is to get this house fully automated using the Elk,HomeSeer,UPB and do as many of th rest of things I can without having to tear into walls, run new cables, etc.
My primary goal is to make sure I learn enought and make the right pre-wiring decisions to give me maximum flexibility in the new house. Additionally, I figure why build the hosue with normal "dumb" switches, etc. only to change them out later. So I'll put all that in early on as well.
Should be quite an adventure.
However, we're in the process of designing our "dream home" that we plan to break ground on in the next few months, so now is the time for me to learn all I can and do all the right things in that house in terms of pre-wiring and so forth.
As part of this process, I'm putting in as much HA as I can in my existing home ... I'd rather learn/play here so I can make the right decisions in the new house.
What I currently have in place is mainy home theater related but I hope to extend this into a lot of HA stuff as well. The heart of my system at this point is an MCE 2005 box in my combination family / home theater room. We use this for all media including Dish Network, CDs (ripped to disk) DVDs (also ripped), DVR (IR emitter controlling DIsh network box), etc. We also have a Linksys MCE Extender in the master bedroom in addition to a 2nd Dish network receiver.
Recently (as in this week), I got a few UPB devices, UPStart, and a trial version of HomeSeer 2.0 w/ the UPB and MCE plug-ins going. I'm leaning towards UPB as the main lighting control (see my threads in the HA forum for more discussion of this) system and the Elk M1 as the controller.
My plan is to get this house fully automated using the Elk,HomeSeer,UPB and do as many of th rest of things I can without having to tear into walls, run new cables, etc.
My primary goal is to make sure I learn enought and make the right pre-wiring decisions to give me maximum flexibility in the new house. Additionally, I figure why build the hosue with normal "dumb" switches, etc. only to change them out later. So I'll put all that in early on as well.
Should be quite an adventure.
