Taking the plunge ! (Longish)

["Graham Howe" <graham@xxxxxxx>]

I am on the verge of getting the go ahead for a major step into the world
of
home automation/smart homes. I live in a very old house (C17th) with walls
and floors of solid stone, oak and crap (a technical term describing the
centuries old rubbish that you find spuing out of any hole that you're
foolish enough to drill). Needless to say there will only be one
opportunity
to lay wires as the mess and cost will not be allowed again. So I want to
get it right (or as right as possible) first time.

At the moment I have my phone and LAN running on CAT5. The CAT5 cabling
runs
from the 'communication cupboard' through a patch panel to the kitchen
(double socket), lounge (2 x double sockets), master bedroom (double
socket), office (six double sockets) and sitting room (two double sockets).
Each port can be switched to home phone line, business phone line or LAN
from the patch panel (using MODTAPs to allow phones to be plugged in).

Here is my first problem/question, at the moment I have a very crude way of
splitting the phone signal. The phone line(s) is ISDN with a terminal
adapter (Zyxel Speeddragon) providing two analogue ports (one for home, one
for business). I simply plugged a bit of CAT5 into each of these ports and
then put the other end into a couple of the cheap phone extension
splitters.
This looks messy and is not very flexible, for example it is difficult for
me to change the number of extensions on the home or business lines and it
does not give me different extension numbers. I would like to have
extension
numbers allowing transfer of calls, intercom functions and the ability to
easily change an extension from being business or home line.

The LAN works fine, but does need extending so I will have to get a bigger
hub, currently I have 16 port 10 Base T but I think I will want to go to 24
or 32 ports and possibly go to 100 as everything else on the network
(NIC's,
printer, printer server) are capable of the faster speed. Does anyone know
of a cheap source for these hubs ? I will stick with CAT5 as I can not see
me needing Gigabit speeds and the cost differential is significant
(particularly as I have 3 boxes of CAT5 sitting in the garage).

Audio in the house is limited to a HiFi rack in the lounge with twin
speaker
terminals on the amp. I have the main speakers running off one set and then
have attached a speaker switch to the other set to give me speakers in the
dining room and sitting room. I also have speaker wire under the patio but
this is currently not connected to speakers or amp. Upstairs I have another
HiFi in the bedroom. Video is slightly strange with the house having two
antennae (no cable or satellite) one picking up Central and the other
Anglia. Both signals are excellent on all five terrestrial channels. The
Anglia signal comes into a booster/splitter and is delivered to the sitting
room, master bedroom and office. The Central signal comes into a
splitter/booster in the lounge but does not feed any other room at the
moment. In the lounge there is a video and DVD, there are no other video
sources in the house at the moment (apart from a Hi8 camera).

As far as A/V is concerned I would like to have audio and video output in
most rooms with audio feed from the two HiFi's and video feed from the VHS,
DVD and later possible satellite (cable is very unlikely to be possible due
to our rural location) and CCTV or similar. I would also like to have both
Central and Anglia signals broadcast as this is an advantage when one
transmitter is faulty. I also expect to have another VHS and DVD player in
the coming year. It would be possible to have two A/V networks and there is
a certain attraction to this from a wiring point of view (one upstairs, one
downstairs) however any CCTV (e.g. door viewer) would still need to be fed
to both networks. Also it could be a bit of a pain if the CD you want to
listen to upstairs is in the CD player downstairs.

With the A/V I am really looking for some advice, I have read a bit about
modulators and sending out the video signal via RF. But where do I source
these in the UK and what is the price, bearing in mind I would want at
least
5 inputs and 8 outputs. Also with audio what are my options, I would want
to
be able to have different volume and source playing in each room.

Finally there is the little matter of control. I have three programmable
remotes so could easily leave one in each of the main rooms and use RF/IR
transmitters to send the commands to the source equipment. However would I
have a problem if I had two source locations, would it be possible to have
two transmitters working on different frequencies ? Alternatively would I
be
better with wired communication. Also there is the matter of X10. I don't
have any X10 at the moment, but do have a cheap and cheerful RF controlled
adapter to turn my whole HiFi stack on or off from a dedicated remote. I
would like this functionality extended to other appliances and lighting and
would like to use an IR remote to control it. Again there is the question
of
multiple receivers and transmitters of IR, is this feasible. Finally on the
subject of X10, when I had the office wired a separate 'daughter' consumer
unit was fitted as there were no more slots free on the existing one. Will
this cause any problems with X10 signals, for example will they be able to
move between the office circuit and the rest of the house. There will be
the
question of garage doors, gates, external lights and more in the future but
I don't expect that to impact on the wiring and design within the house.

So baring all this in mind I'm looking for all you 'old hands' to give me
any advice you might have.

Thanks in advance

Graham


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