New Home ready to get smart

["Derek Erb" <dce42@xxxxxxx>]

Hi!

I'm new to this group and hope I'm in the right place...

I'm buying a new home next month and am looking to make it
as "smart" as possible.

The house is 3 floors.  There is a front gate/wall which currently
has a "boring" audio intercom for people who arrive with the
other
end of the intercom behind the front door.

What I'd like is a video intercom instead.

What we desperately need is an internal audio (maybe video as well)
intercom for all of the rooms.  Basically from any of the "key"
rooms we need to be able to speak to any of the other key rooms.
The key rooms include my office (downstairs end), the garden, the
kitchen (ground floor), the living room (ground floor), the main
bedroom (ground floor), one child bedroom (1st floor), other child
bedroom (1st floor) and terrasse (1st floor).

Most of the intercoms I have seen have been a master/slave idea in
that the kitchen, for esxample, could call any room but each room
could only call the kitchen.  We need multidirectional in each
room.  A sort of intercom network.

I also obviously need an alarm system.  I want something which
detects motion in the front courtyard or the back garden or the
terrasse and immediately turns the outdoor lights on.  Then if
someone brekas in through a door or a window an alarm goes off.
Maybe video surveillance as well?  I wouldn't mind extending that so
that when you go downstairs the hall light comes on and that sort of
thing.

Now for the fun part:  I'd also like to be able to share music from
computers on stereos throughout the house and photos/videos from
computers on the televisions.

As you can see I've got lots of dreams...

Our current flat already has the computers and we use a combination
of a very small wired network (Ethernet 10/100) and a WiFi (802.11b)
network.

I'm going to have to doing wiring work on the new house before we
move in and I obviously want to do everyhing at once and before we
paint and stuff.  I'm looking to have Ethernet everywhere for
comuters and other equipment (present and future) as well as WiFi
for Internet access in various rooms as well as in the garden and
the terrasse.

I've got a lot to do and there are soooooo many options I have to
admit I'm a bit overwhelmed.

Where can I get started?  What should I do?  What do YOU recommend???

Thanks in advance...