Home network 'build'

[Deleted member 651465]

Just checked out your home build, must say its awesome.

Now you got me thinking about extra cables for tv and audio and IR.

How does the IR stuff work? You wire it into a room and control the box the IR is connected to by pointing at the port? Where is the IR reader placed?

Could you also update the 403 forbidden pictures..?

The IR sensor is placed in each room, and these connect to the IR commander which in turn passes the signal to the device. The ones I used are meant to be for furniture I.e. you drill a 25mm hole in an AV cupboard and have this on the door to point your remote at, I just put them in the ceiling as they are small and unobtrusive.

You can also get ones that look like a blanked off fused socket, for want of a better description.

Each sensor has a 3.5mm jack on the end, so I got some 3.5mm to rj45 converters to allow me to pass the signal around the house on network cable. I basically screwed a single gang network socket to the joists above the ceiling and terminated them with cat 6 the same as the rooms, so if anything ever did happen to the sensor it would just be a case of swap and replace. This meant I could also test the network cable was working before a) buying the sensors and b) before the plasterboard went up.

I plugged in a short cat6 patch cable to the socket and taped the other end up to a bit of rope so the plasterer and / or painter didn't FUBAR the connections. It worked well! I'd love to see someone buy this house and discover those sockets in the ceiling void mind!

When that network cable goes back to the rack it terminates in the 16way patch panel I spoke about earlier, which I dedicated to telephones and IR. I just patch the port from the front of the patch panel and take the lead behind the rack and have a second converter (this time rj45 - 3.5mm) to turn the signal back to a 3.5mm jack and in to the commander.

Keene electronics sell all this stuff, and I did use extension inputs and outputs, but I'm simplifying for easy reading! lol I will say its never so much as stuttered! Everything has "just worked". Probably the highlight of the build. People always comment now great it is to control it all hidden away. The IR commander can be networked but I've never saw the need really.

Each device in the rack has a small sensor on each bit of kit to allow control. These can be stuck on like mine (they have a small pad of adhesive on the rear) or you can Velcro them on but they're pretty rugged.

The magic happens at the IR commander as you can use DIN switches to limit each sensor I.e. stop a sensor in the kids bedroom from accessing a specific device input like the AV receiver. I have them all set to open as I was testing it and never got round to limiting them.

I've signed back in to the imageshack account, so the pictures should now be available again. I'll post a recent picture of the IR control and populated rack soon.

 

[masscrazy]

@EVH - WOW, that is pretty damn brilliant. Cant wait to see the old and new pics.

I still dont quite understand how video like sky+ is shared to various rooms, is it that you have the 1 box and each room gets the same picture?

 

[Deleted member 651465]

Essentially, I ran out of money during the build and had to scale back certain things. I wanted a HDMI over Cat 6 matrix, but they are like £3000-5000 and I couldn't justify that, so now everything goes in to the AV receiver, out through the HDMI to Cat 6 balun, over the Cat 6, out of the socket behind the TV, through another balun which converts it back to HDMI and in to the TV.

The living room TV can display all sources in HD, whereas the other TVs only get freeview and Sky via coax until I sort something out.

The options I have considered:
1) HDMI over Cat 6 matrix - expensive - different HD sources on different TVs
2) HDMI splitter - cheap - same HD source on all TVs
3) HDMI over HDBaseT - not as expensive as option 1 - different HD sources on different TVs - some handshaking issues with my Onkyo AV Receiver which put me off

Latest setup, excuse the dust. Shamefully I've been sorting the new wardrobes and sanding dust is getting everywhere!

 

[Caged]

Have you looked at these?

http://www.provideoinstruments.com/...coax-t4-series-four-hdmi-dvb-t-modulator.html

 

[Deleted member 651465]

Have you looked at these?

http://www.provideoinstruments.com/...coax-t4-series-four-hdmi-dvb-t-modulator.html

Interesting! I saw something like that a while ago but was put off because you don't get pixel-accurate HD at the end. Will read into this though.

Finally, I thought I'd finish off my contribution to the thread by posting a bit on the networking side of my house build, seeing as people are interested.

You may, or may not have picked up on the broadband problems we were suffering whilst we first moved in. Essentially, we had a REIN issue that was knocking the ADSL out randomly throughout the evening and weekend etc. It's down to a faulty electrical supply nearby, but we never got around to pinpointing it and BT... well, *facepalm*

So... I thought I would be stuck until my parents had a rural broadband service fitted. It is a form of point to point wireless access point that receives signals from nearby fibre-fed towers, in the local village.

Interested, I asked the engineers on the job, if I could receive the signal at my home (approx 5km away). They said they'd do a site survey and left. Looking at the graph you can see the distance, the trees and elevation of the "line of sight".

A few months later and this is on my house..

The first day they installed this, they chose to screw it directly to the PVC fascia of the house which I was a bif confused by as there are high trees in the neighbours garden opposite to our house, and I didn't think it would work. It did work, but at "10Mb".

Considering we paid £500 for the privilege of the install, I demanded they come back and put it on a longer pole. They took some convincing, but I always find the mention of "not happy, not paying.." always swings the argument. It's now on a 10ft pole.

If you look at the bottom of the antenna you can see lights. Each light indicates a level of signal strength except the first 2 on the left. 1 is power, 2 is LAN and the others are signal. Red is low, amber is medium and green is full signal for their respective band.

Much better! The ping is surprisingly good too considering the distance it's coming from. It can drop as low as 3-5ms in the winter when the trees have no leaves but aside from whipping out the chainsaw, this is always going to be my limit.

The end goal is fibre to the home, or at the very least fibre to the cabinet, so if I have to remove the WAN antenna I will use the pole they've put up to house the DAB radio aerial. Obviously I will shorten the pole first!

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18176439

 

[masscrazy]

Thanks for the extra info evh!

We've started running cat6. Woohooo

This is the cat6 we've got so far

Floor 3
* 4 Main bedroom
* 2 in second bedroom

Floor 2
* 2 in bedroom 1
* 2 in bedroom 2
* 2 in bedroom 3
* 4 in study

Floor 1
* 4 in living room 1
* 4 in living room 2
* 2 in kitchen

Total CAT6 run 26. This will have to be max since there is not much scope to run additional cables once the walls and floors are covered.

We are also wiring twin coax into each room except kitchen. So thats 8 twin coax. Two Sky satellite dishes with octo LNB. Not sure how to use each box independently without extra subscriptions just yet though.

We are also thinking of running a digital tv coax into each room. Any recommendations for the aerial? Will have to be external.

Also thinking about audio. But for now in a single bedroom in on floor 3. What cable is required for this? Special or standard audio cable..

 

[Caged]

Ewww, multiple dishes? Just use a decent dish, quattro LNB and a multiswitch, it looks much nicer and then you can use a larger dish so you won't lose the signal in bad weather.

 

[masscrazy]

Never heard about those. That would be perfect.

What does this product do? SLx 8 Way Signal Distribution Amplifier with digital bypass?? I see by the reviews on it, people use it for sky and for digital freeview.