Re: Multimedia

["ohno" <emedley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Steve,
Your questions are very common and speak to a continuing problem with
AV/Home Control issues.

"How cheap can I get in?  Can I get in cheap and later upgrade?"

There are a variety of ways to go about distributing your PC audio
playback throughout your home.

Elan makes some great stuff. The Russound solution is also good.
Systems like that are somewhat 'closed' in that they don't allow for
much customization and upgrading.

The question is how far do you want to take this?  I find that most
people don't have any idea of the level of control you can have.  Also,
some people want to control too much and the system gets impracticle
and expesive fast.

what I'd do is sit down and brainstorm about the things you wish to
control and write them down.  Then look around and see what systems
will do or can expand to do what you want.

As with all things AV, it's only a matter of money.  My clients
routinely spend aver $300K to autoamate their homes.  (I'm an AMX
programmer and AV designer)  They control things like
lighting,security,HVAC,whole-house A/V distribution systems,Pool/hot
tub controls,Gate and door locks, IP networking, computers, etc...

Here's an example of what they do with all this.  One client uses the
system as an alarm clock.  (they have 7" color touch panels in every
room)  She sets the time on the 'virtual alarm clock' on the panel at
night.  The house climate controls adjust the room temperatures based
upon the time of year, weather conditions and customer personal tastes
about 20 minutes before wake up time.  at wake up time, the lighitng in
the room begins a slow fade up over 5 minutes, the audio system comes
on quietly with some classical music.  Once they get out of bed and
turn on the bathroom lights, the system then automatically switches to
the radio station and their bedroom TV switches on CNN.

Is this silly?  I dunno.  My personal system does similar things but
I'm not so interested in having it turn on my radio or TV.

You don't have to get that nutty with control, nor spend that much.
Most folks just want to distribute some audio or video around the
house.  Just be honest with yourself and your needs and pick a system
that will go to that point.

Later,
ejm

stevekokx@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Hello all!
>
> I'm VERY new to the whole home automation field.  For the moment, I am
> just looking at using wall panels to connect to a central PC and play
> MP3's in any wired room.
>
> Can someone point me to some systems that make this possible.
> Eventually, I would like to scale up to use the wall panels to control
> playback of video, but that is a project for another day.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Steve.