Introductory Message and questions

["Andy Day" <home_automation@xxxxxxx>]

Hi

My name is Andy Day, I live Hampshire v. close to the Hants/Surrey/Berks
border and I am another new member to the list and HA in general. My
main aim is to get a better understanding of some of the products
available and how they integrate together so I can help automate a
friends house and then mine. Notice I intend to use his house as the
guinea pig so any issues can be ironed out at his place before I tackle
mine.

Let me apologise in advance for asking so many questions at once, and
I'm sure questions that have been asked numerous times before by newbies
like me. I am still trying to understand how some of the available
systems works together to enhance an HA system. I keep finding that the
more I read the more confused I become, and the more questions I have.

Firstly I am looking at lighting and AV solutions for a mates new house,
although I expect the requirements to expand in time. The house has just
been built but as it is finished cannot be treated as a new build. At
least it is on one storey so any rewiring will be fairly straight
forward except for 2 rooms that have high vaulted ceilings and no loft
space but I'm sure we can get around that. So there aren't too many
problems with a system requiring a certain amount of rewiring or
additional cabling.

We managed to make it to UKHA2003 at Hatfield for a day and got a lot of
inspiration as well as total confusion and brain overload.

Having seen the Clipsal presentation at the meet and the recent postings
to this list C-Bus looks to be the way ahead on the lighting front,
however a number of questions arise mostly because I am still unsure how
everything hangs together. I intend to take the Clipsal course but I
don't know when I will be able to do this and how well they will cover
topics such as integrating external controllers.

In an X10 environment I can see how an external controller such as
HomeVision can enhance the features and functionality of lights and
appliances. But where and why does something like Comfort come into it?
Is Comfort used additionally to HV or in place of HV? and what other
than security does Comfort bring to the party?

Now just to confuse me more, what is the best option in a C-Bus
environment, do I need an external controller, Clipsal C-Gate Server
seems to add additional control functionality plus an interface to 3rd
party control software. What software has the ability to interact with
C-Gate (I have heard of Homeseer and Autom8it, could these or others
work) or is C-Gate all I need? In time I would like to use ToD plus PIRs
and light level sensors to turn lights on automatically at night
someone, especially the kids, goes to the bathroom at night. Plus I
would hope, in time, lots of similar automatic controls. Alternatively
Clipsal do SceneMaster controller for scene lighting, although I don't
know if this can be worked with external inputs for this type of
control. Comfort has a CBus integration Board. What does this do for me?
And as an additional point of confusion the new HomeBrain system should
have Cbus compatibility built in. This seems to offer a great deal more
than the Clipsal controllers but I could be wrong. Also would HomeBrain
work with or instead of Comfort in this type of scenario and what about
external input devices, PIRs, temp sensors, light level sensors, would
they need to be CBus or could Comfort and HomeBrain use other input
devices to switch/dim CBus devices? I also see a mention of Crestron
within some Clipsal info, how does this integrate and what functionality
would I get from Crestron?

Now before my head explodes here is something a whole lot simpler, for
me at least. The Neo switches look really smart and incorporate an IR
receiver. Can this be used to distribute IR to Clipsals IR transmitters
for control of AV eqpt in another room or is it restricted to contol of
the lighting with the optional Clipsal remote or Pronto etc?

Onto the AV part and I am not 100% sure exactly what to do here so I
will listen to any other ideas on what to do and how to do it. The
basics would be to :

1.	Have a whole house audio/video system (well most of house
anyway) and have auto scene lighting for watching DVDs etc in the lounge

2.	A selection of input sources, Lounge CD, DAB, Sky and DVD, MP3s
>from
3.	Ideally different rooms could select a different source or
master control of the lot.
4.	Amplification and speakers to be relatively cheap i.e. no
expensive designer type setup from Bose, Linn or the like
5.	Remote control of all devices via Pronto. Wireless iPaq or
similar and web tablet remote control. MP3 playlist control.
6.	Probably other stuff not yet thought of. I would welcome any
good ideas for extra functionality that people on the list see as a must
have so long as it isn't extortionately expensive.

Now how to do all this, and again I am open to any suggestions here.
Have I got this hideously wrong. My thoughts so far are.

1.	Have a separate amp in the loft (Node 0) for each room. Amp
would have to be controlled from remote as required in each room.
2.	MP3 server PC and either Xtreamer or SliMP3s for individual
rooms and Audiotron for the lounge that doubles as a master whole house
MP3 source.
3.	Use KAT-5 senders to distribute sky and DVD
4.	The source components would have to input to all amps so some
form of splitter needed
5.	Remote to control each room. Can FirM help here with it's zoned
IR and does it need an external controller such as HV to do this.
6.	Control software needed for the iPaq, maybe NetRemote or is
there something better. (Also can this be used to control the lighting,
particularly C-Bus?)

One last thing, what are the best up to date books on HA, any good
recommendations?

So many questions with, I'm sure, many more answers. All help and ideas
gratefully received, I look forward to complete brain overload.

Thanks and sorry again for so many questions all at once.

Andy




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