Stewart Priest

Loose Ends..

// June 9th, 2011 // 4 Comments » // DIY, Tech

Now that there are only 4 weeks to go until baby makes an appearance, I’ve now found myself trying to tie up all those loose ends in my smart home project. It’s not been easy, and I’m nowhere near close to being finished. I’ve still got an alarm system to fit, voice activation for the smart home software, energy monitoring, HVAC controls and more.

The other day, however, I did manage to finish a project which is kind of central to the whole project. When I say ‘central’, I literally mean ‘central’. In smart home circles, this means ‘Node Zero/Node 0′. Node Zero is usually the point in the home where everything comes together. Figuratively, the centre of the home setup. For most, this is a rack of equipment including all your AV equipment, security, applicance control, network, digital storage and other stuff. It’s usually found in one of three places: under the stairs, in the garage, or in my case, the loft.

Now, my loft hatch isn’t big enough to take a 19″ rack in one piece, and with a baby on the way, money is tight. Metal racks can be expensive and I couldn’t, in all good concience, try to convince SWMBO to let me fork out for a proper rack. The alternative? Build one from wood. Its not pretty, its not going to withstand a tornado, but its strong enough to hold all my kit. I think.

It’s not completely finished, but it’s getting there. I’ll have to dismantle it before getting it up into the loft, but here it is in all its unfinished glory:

Any thoughts on how to make this better, or suggestions for my next project will be graciously received!

AppleFail

// October 14th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Tech

I don’t consider myself an Apple evangelist, or PC/Microsoft evangelist for that matter. I’m a firm believer in ‘the right tool for the right job’. So, at home I use a PC and a laptop for browsing the web, etc – I don’t need oodles and oodles of processing power to watch a YouTube video, and I don’t need it to be ‘pretty’ either. If I ever get enough cash together, I will, for sure, get a Mac Pro 8-core machine to serve as a ProTools machine, but not until I get the £6000 together to do so.

I like my kit to be value for money, and when I spend a fair amount on something, I expect it to work. If it doesn’t, I expect a good level of service. I got my iPhone through The Carphone Warehouse, and I decided that, as this is such a high-value handset, I would take out the Geek Squad subscription.

So when my iPhone developed a fault, I wanted someone to look at it. I took it into my nearest Carphone Warehouse and described the fault to the Geek Squad agent. He advised that this was a hardware fault, but due to its age, it would be a warranty fix. Unfortunately for me though, he told me that Apple don’t allow anyone to tinker with their hardware, so it must go back to Apple for examination/repair/replacement. This would take up to 4 weeks.

4 WEEKS? FOR A BUZZING NOISE? As an alternative, he suggested that I take it into the Apple store and go through the issue with one of their Geniuses. I phoned the Glasgow store only to be told that yes, this did sound like a hardware fault, and yes, it would probably just be replaced in-store, but no, I could not come today. “Why not?” I asked. I was advised that I must make an appointment to see a ‘genius’, and that the next available appointment was in 2 days time. Disappointed, I decided that I should just make the appointment and get my phone fixed. Oh, but I can’t make the appointment on the phone with the girl I’m speaking to – I have to do it online at the Apple website.

So not only can I not just walk into the store and get a replacement, I can’t even make an appointment ON THE PHONE? How difficult do you want to make this, Apple? You suck. #fail

iPhone Troubles

// October 11th, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve noticed something very strange about my iPhone 3GS… no, it’s not the fact that it’s not an iPhone 4, it’s more the noise that it’s been making. When I first got my phone, it performed well, and when I upgraded to iOS 4, I started to get some issues with dropped calls, random reboots, etc. All of this I can live with – a software update will eventually sort these issues.

However, I appear to be experiencing something more hardware-related. It’s what I can only describe as GSM buzz. When I’m making calls, I can hear a buzzing noise in the earpiece which sounds like the noise you get when you place a mobile phone too close to a set of speakers. It’s also getting so loud that I now hear it faintly when the phone is just sitting, unused, on my desk.

Do any of my readers experience such an issue? Should I be taking it into Apple for a warranty repair? Comments welcome!

HDMI over Cat5e

// June 28th, 2010 // No Comments » // DIY, Tech

As you may have read, I’ll be moving into my own place very soon, and this will give me the opportunity to ‘Pimp My House’. She Who Must Be Obeyed (SWMBO) has largely given me free reign to do whatever I like so long as “there aren’t cables running all over the house”. Well, there will, but none you’ll see.

The key element of any smart home is structured cabling – in my case Cat5e. I was planning on running HDMI to a couple of different rooms, but in lengths greater than 10 metres, its unreliable and expensive. So, how do I plan to get the HDMI signal from my V+ box in the loft, to my TV in the living room? By using a pair of HDMI baluns, of course! By using a pair of these boxes, I can use my structured cabling to send the HDMI signal from the V+ box to my TV. Simples! In case you’re wondering what these baluns look like, here they are:

Quite small and unobtrusive, I think you’ll agree. It’d be easy enough to cable-tie one of these bad boys to the wall mount or the VESA fitting at the back of the TV, or just to hide away with the rest of the cables, so SWMBO will be happy, and this leads to a quiet life for me. Its really a win-win situation. SWMBO is happy, I don’t have to spend loads of money on long HDMI cables and these boxes are £30 on Amazon. In fact, you can buy them here.

I’ll post a review when I put them to use, but all in all, these look great!

New House, New Project

// May 9th, 2010 // No Comments » // DIY, Tech, Windows 7

Those of you who follow my Twitter feed may already be aware of this, but for those of you who don’t, Jen and I have bought a house. It’s all very exciting, for a number of reasons. One of which is that I’ve been allowed to put all the tech I want into it! I suspect that Michelle will be very jealous.

I’ve been a fan of home automation for a long time, and whilst still living at home with the parents, I’ve been able to experiment with X10 with great success. Thankfully, the house is all on one level, with loft access. So far, it’s been decided that I’ll be running Cat5 cable to every room – maybe not the bathroom, but there’s still potential for that if I can justify it – along with speaker cable and possibly two or three HDMI cables.

I’ll have an automation server running Homeseer as a backend to the house, which will pull together pretty much all the tech in the house. My main media server will run Windows Home Server, serving up audio and video to Windows 7 PCs which run Windows Media Center.

Broadcast media will arrive in the house in a variety of different ways: 2 Virgin Media boxes will provide cable TV to either the TVs directly, or to the Windows 7 boxes to be played out via WMC; at least one Freesat box (there’s already a satellite dish feeding into the house); and regular old council telly – Freeview.

My studio equipment will live in its own room, herein referred to as my studio. The studio PC will live in the loft along with the servers so I can reduce the equipment noise in the studio itself. Monitor and keyboard/mouse will arrive in the room via an Adder standalone KVM box.

I’m sure there will be all kinds of pitfalls along the way, but with the help of the folks over at Automated Home, I’m sure things will go pretty well! Stay tuned for more news on the tech house. I can’t wait!