Home network, AV, Alarm, Heating and others - where to start

Chanquete

Hi all

We just got keys to our new home. The house is a medium sized semidetached, 4 bed. It's 20 years old and in pretty good condition; however before we move in we'd like to do some work to it - bathrooms, floors, repainting... So it would also be a good time to do some wiring and infrastucture work (my wife will be very reluctant to see any additional cables added after walls are repainted).

The current electricity wiring is ok (a couple of cracked sockets, and a few unsightly cables), it has an ok alarm (wired, non-monitored) and a basic heating system.

I would like to wire the house for data, and future-proof myself as much as possible. We have a wireless network in our current home and although it works reasonably well, I find that wireless access to things like my NAS is not great, even when using wireless-N.

So this is what I'd like to do:

Internet
I'd like wired internet access from most rooms (wireless-N works ok, but not fast enough for accessing my NAS, and I suspect it will struggle with future HD content). In particular the study, and the sitting and living rooms (in order to stream content into the TV), and at least one connection on each bedroom.

My current thoughts: Running CAT6E from each room into a central location (under stairs): 1 to NTL box (in case modem is there), 2 (or more?) to the vicinity of each TV point, 1 to each bedroom (3 of them), 2 to the study, 1 to a central location in the house (for a wireless access point).

My questions:
- Anything obviously wrong there?
- Is CAT6E a good choice? I.e., is it hard to find, tricky to setup, will installers be familiar with it.

Alarm
Current alarm is in working condition but not monitored or maintained.

I'd like to replace it with a monitored system, and include panic buttons, ideally centralize it with fire/smoke alarms. Possibly wireless, if it makes sense. It'd be handy to have remote internet access / notifications.

Video and Sound
Two main TVs, one (32') in sitting room and one (maybe a 50') in living room. Will need a speaker setup in the living room (TV quite far away from couch). Nothing too fancy, but good quality. I'd like to use the speakers for the TV, CDs, streamed output (from home network sources) and stuff like iPods.

In both TV sets I'd like to be able to watch:
- Cable TV (HD and SD)
- BlueRay and DVDs
- Streamed content (HD and SD) (from wired home network)
- In the larger TV, BluRay 3D contents

The "streamed" content would be either movies / episodes / videos stored in my NAS or wireless cameras (baby monitoring, etc)

Not sure what's best here. I don't want to duplicate all hardware for each TV if it can be avoided. I know there are some solutions out there for distributing HDMI using two CAT cables, but the technology is quite new and I assume 3DTV (HDMI 1.4?) is not supported.


Heating
Not an area I'm particularly familiar with. Heating is gas. Current system seems to have only a global temperature regulator - no timers, no different control over different areas (although each radiator has it's own tap).

I have no idea about costs or difficulty of improving this. But, ideally, I'd like heating over different areas to be controllable and automatable either through individual timers/controls or (much better) a single control panel. Ideally, the system would be suitable for global home automation (i.e., lights, etc) in the future (see next topic)


Home automation and control
I've always had an interest in this, so a big plus would be to have the systems above built with a view of being able to control everything from software. Things like automating lights or doing more sophisticated multiroom sound is something I don't really need right now, but I'd like to take into consideration when wiring and choosing the different systems.

Basically now that we will be wiring, plastering and painting, I'd like to get the infrasture right. That is, wires, sockets, and any technological choices.


So, here are the questions

- Anything wrong with my ideas above? Any recommendations?

- I'm techy but, unfortunately, I'm not very handy . So I expect I'll need to hire somebody to do all/most of the work above. Are there reliable companies that can understand and handle all this at the same time (data wiring, AV wiring, alarm, heating, automation in the future), without having to buy a complex, closed and expensive proprietary Home Automation package?

- If not, any suggestions for each individual piece of work (what to use, who could do the job)?

Sorry for the long post and thank you in advance for any advice. Happy to clarify anything further.

Cheers,
Chanquete

altor

Chanquete wrote: »

Alarm
Current alarm is in working condition but not monitored or maintained.

I'd like to replace it with a monitored system, and include panic buttons, ideally centralize it with fire/smoke alarms. Possibly wireless, if it makes sense. It'd be handy to have remote internet access / notifications.

I would be more inclined to get the cables installed for the alarm if your getting the place rewired. It will work out cheaper than going down the wire free route. You will need to wire it for smoke detectors, a few motions detectors, panic buttons, extra keypads, all your windows and doors, external bell plus a phone cable to where your main line comes into the house if your getting it monitored.

Chanquete

Thanks, I'm currently thinking of the Signet 220 (same as Signet 200 but with ethernet access) for the alarm system.

Any other suggestions or comments regarding the other ideas? Do they make sense at all?

altor

Chanquete wrote: »

Thanks, I'm currently thinking of the Signet 220 (same as Signet 200 but with ethernet access) for the alarm system.

Any other suggestions or comments regarding the other ideas? Do they make sense at all?

If you require the internet access the signet 220 will cover you on this. The rest makes sense but you could read a few treads on this on boards http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055720721&highlight=home+automation this is just one of them. Might get you more info

Stoner

Chanquete wrote: »

I would like to wire the house for data, and future-proof myself as much as possible. We have a wireless network in our current home and although it works reasonably well, I find that wireless access to things like my NAS is not great, even when using wireless-N.

So this is what I'd like to do:

Internet
I'd like wired internet access from most rooms (wireless-N works ok, but not fast enough for accessing my NAS, and I suspect it will struggle with future HD content). In particular the study, and the sitting and living rooms (in order to stream content into the TV), and at least one connection on each bedroom.

My current thoughts: Running CAT6E from each room into a central location (under stairs): 1 to NTL box (in case modem is there), 2 (or more?) to the vicinity of each TV point, 1 to each bedroom (3 of them), 2 to the study, 1 to a central location in the house (for a wireless access point).

My questions:
- Anything obviously wrong there?
- Is CAT6E a good choice? I.e., is it hard to find, tricky to setup, will installers be familiar with it.



Not sure what's best here. I don't want to duplicate all hardware for each TV if it can be avoided. I know there are some solutions out there for distributing HDMI using two CAT cables, but the technology is quite new and I assume 3DTV (HDMI 1.4?) is not supported.

I've got CAT6e in my place, CAT 6 would be fine as the switch is a 10/100/1000 so I'm not using the Cat6 to its full capacity, the switch is the bottleneck. I can watch 1080p 8GB movies stored on my NAS drive on my Media PC without issue, just need plenty of RAM on the PC.

Cat 6e will need bulkier data outlets to give a wider sweep on the cable entry.
dont be shy with the data cabling, I have one printer on my home network and I can print to it from anywhere so leave a point for it, its also handy to have the Xbox 360 and the PS3 on the network. I have used the 2 x Cat 5e and 2 x Cat 6 media extenders once before, they worked but are best installed point to point so they dont go back to a hub or switch, they go from the display to the screen so they are not really part of the network they are just wired media extenders. On the 2 x CAT6 unit we are getting 1080p but its only about 7 meters away, I think the limit is 50Mish then the resolution suffers.

Chanquete

Stoner wrote: »

I've got CAT6e in my place, CAT 6 would be fine as the switch is a 10/100/1000 so I'm not using the Cat6 to its full capacity, the switch is the bottleneck. I can watch 1080p 8GB movies stored on my NAS drive on my Media PC without issue, just need plenty of RAM on the PC.

Cat 6e will need bulkier data outlets to give a wider sweep on the cable entry.
dont be shy with the data cabling, I have one printer on my home network and I can print to it from anywhere so leave a point for it, its also handy to have the Xbox 360 and the PS3 on the network. I have used the 2 x Cat 5e and 2 x Cat 6 media extenders once before, they worked but are best installed point to point so they dont go back to a hub or switch, they go from the display to the screen so they are not really part of the network they are just wired media extenders. On the 2 x CAT6 unit we are getting 1080p but its only about 7 meters away, I think the limit is 50Mish then the resolution suffers.

Thank you. Could I ask where did you find CAT6A cable? just trying to get an indication of its cost (compared to CAT5E or CAT6). Can't find any online shop that sells CAT6A boxes.

Cat 6e will need bulkier data outlets to give a wider sweep on the cable entry.

Mmm are they very unsightly? (anticipating wife's reaction here )

(btw I assume CAT6A and CAT6E are the same thing (CAT6A) - somebody correct me if not!)

Stoner

Chanquete wrote: »

Thank you. Could I ask where did you find CAT6A cable? just trying to get an indication of its cost (compared to CAT5E or CAT6). Can't find any online shop that sells CAT6A boxes.

Mmm are they very unsightly? (anticipating wife's reaction here )

(btw I assume CAT6A and CAT6E are the same thing (CAT6A) - somebody correct me if not!)

I got it in Kellihers electrical, it's fatter cable, the face plates are fine. Check the sticky on the main forumk page for a list of wholesalers and some data suppliers

Your assumption is more or less correct.