The Geek Dream Home (Ideas)

[foogledricks]

In a few years I plan to buy a house. My ideal is having some control over the house before it is entirely built, so that I can lay the groundwork for geekhood. With that, I'd like to give my list of things I'd love my home to have. Some of you might already have some of this.

 

GENERAL HOME CONFIGURATION

 

 

 

• Wireless and wired network access in every room (router+repeaters).
  
• Cabling in every room would include gigabit ethernet, cable coax, and phone line.
  
• In-wall speakers in every room for intercom and music
  
• Remote control LCD touch screen panel in every room to control music, lighting, and intercom for every other room in the house. Would also control security system.
  
• LCD screen could be configured to display photo collection when not in use (Like a screensaver)
  

HOME THEATRE CONFIGURATION

 

• 1080p 3-chip Projector on ceiling
  
• 6.1 Surround, in-wall speakers
  
• Stadium seating with 2-3 small sofas
  

These are some base-line ideals I'd love to have in a couple years. Of course I'll have an HD-DVD player, HD-DVR, and various game systems. But those are all givens.

 

I read "Sound & Vision" and "Home Theater Magazine" every month, and am teased by their coverage of these technologies. If I contacted a professional about this, I wonder how much he'd say this would all cost.

 

I have a dream, what's yours?

[foogledricks]

I thought I'd list what I currently have in my home for frame of reference:

 

• Wired/Wireless Router
  
• On Network: Tivo (w/HMO), Xboxes(2), laptops(2), Desktop Computer
  
• Wired Ethernet in most rooms
  
• 1080i RPTV, 5.1 Surround
  

So my want-list is mostly an evolution of what I already have, except having speakers, intercom, and a touch-panel remote control in every room. That is the BIG difference.

[dogbert]

What I'm slowly moving towards is having a central media "hub". I already do it with all of our music/photos, and with video to a lesser degree. When HD-DVD comes around, that'll put a spanner in the works, but with regular DVD it's certainly possible to have a central server spooling out all of the video content you own to all of the PCs/devices on your network.

[HoolieMan]

I often make lists like this for my future home. I am not sure if you have heard of this company but they showed me just how far this whole geek house thing can go:

 

Smart Home

 

As far as a central media hub goes, this is a dream of mine. I even want to go so far as to have all my DVDs on a central server so they can just be served to the entire house. I have seen various products that do this but none that are affordable. If you want to drool over such a system, check out kaleidescape. Watching their demo video is definitely worth it.

[foogledricks]

Keep it coming. I love this discussion. And I'll watch that video soon.

[secretvampire]

The hardest part is going to be finding a builder that will include some of these items in their house plans, not charge an arm and a leg, and do a competant job. The more "custom" you make the plans, the more you will pay for the plan and you will have to keep a close eye when the house is getting built to make sure they don't screw it up. I am speaking on all of this having just watched a friend go through the same thing. Just a few things to keep in mind!

[Romier S]

I just started working for a company that does the exact kind of thing we're discussing here. They do full on "rough in" (during the building stage of a custom home) enclosures that include full wired/wireless networking throughout the entire home, custom audio (including 5.1,6.1,7.1 setups), video modules for full access to all components, camera systems, security, intercoms, and more. All of the connections/wiring are Cat5 (568A standard) based for easy configuration.

 

http://www.onqhome.com

It's pricey stuff of course but if you're building a new home, it may be suit your needs.

[dogbert]

Romier, you forgot to include the [pimp] ... [/pimp] tags on that post

[Romier S]

Apologies. Doing what I can for the company.

[foogledricks]

Your company just lost a customer. My very first experience on the site were menus that don't work in either IE or Firefox. It seems to be the fault of the flash animation, in part. I'm going to have to go to a competitor.

[Romier S]

My very first experience on the site were menus that don't work in either IE or Firefox

HA! Folks are aware of it here and it is being fixed. It's only a recent issue and it's being worked through. Apologies for not mentioning it earlier.

(Oh and we bought/merged with our biggest competitor, Greyfox. We are adding thier product line to ours at the moment. It's what I'm currently being trained on )

 

EDIT: I noticed you mentioned IE, the menu's work perfectly fine on my comp Keith in IE. It's only FireFox and Opera that show the display issue. Make sure you have the latest version of Flash installed.

[General Zot]

One thing I have found to be crucial to a geek pad / HT type dream setup is to have a fully finished basement. It gives you quite a few perks vs. a living room setup:

 

* Much easier to control the light levels in the room (esp in the day)

* If you REALLY like bass, you can have that SVS cranked and not shake your neighbor's filling out of their heads at 3 AM.

* Because it's dedicated and lots of space, you can get away with putting a truly monstrous sized TV/screen down there.

* Going along with that, when it's out of common view, the WAF (or GAF for you dating peeps) becomes way more lenient. Get those floor standing mains if you want them, it's cool.

* If you have kids or may someday, the two floors between your gaming/HT fun and their napping selves is again a blessing.

 

Other than that, be sure to have a Hot Chicks room installed in your pad, it pays for itself in the long run...

[foogledricks]

Consider me part of your QA team. I'm on IE 6, Windows 2000, but couldn't tell you what version of Flash is installed in IE. The menus are obstructed by the flash ad.

 

Even so, I will still consider your company when making a integration decision... but only if you get a bonus for bringing me in.

[secretvampire]

One thing I have found to be crucial to a geek pad / HT type dream setup is to have a fully finished basement. It gives you quite a few perks vs. a living room setup.

 

Depends where you live though...here in Texas, basements are pretty much non-existant!

[Baiter]

My house is being framed as we speak, I'm doing a few modifications that might tread into geek territory.

 

The living room is turning into a home theater room with 7.1 sound and somewhere between 80"-100" screen. :drool I'm having the room acoustically insulated so I can use it at the wee hours of the morning, and the surrounds are going to be roughed in. I'm also having a pipe installed behind my stereo cabinet and the projector so I can switch between component/dvi/hdmi or whatever comes next when the time comes. The stereo cabinet is going to be behind the seating area, so I'll be installing an ir relay system as well.

 

My other minor project is we have a deep closet on the first floor that's in the center of the house. I plan on putting power telephone and cable in it, and running my router, dsl modem, and cable boxes out of the closet.

 

I'd like to go crazy and install an ir to x10 system that would control the lights and blinds in the ht room, but that project is going to have a to wait a year or 2. The ht room is braking the bank as it is. :eh

[JTello]

ExtremeTech has an article on building a PC kitchen, but more to the point, it's actually a chapter from thier book Geek House.

[foogledricks]

I was just reading about X10 on the SmartHome web site. It seems interesting, but also comes off as a workaround for not having your house properly wired. Right? If I had all the proper wiring, I wouldn't need to use the electrical lines, right? X10 sounds like something you'd use when you don't have an opportunity to wire your house the way you want to.

 

Hey, and what does "rough in" mean?

[Baiter]

Hey, and what does "rough in" mean?

I believe it means it needs to be installed during construction.

 

In some respects I agree on the x10 technology, but it gives you flexibility. You'll really never see into the future far enough to have your house hardwired for everything. In 5 years you may change the way your christmas lights work, or add automatic blinds in the bedroom. X10 makes it easy for an end user to perform those tasks.

[Romier S]

I believe it means it needs to be installed during construction.

Correct, or meaning that it's being installed during the building phase of your home.

 

In some respects I agree on the x10 technology, but it gives you flexibility. You'll really never see into the future far enough to have your house hardwired for everything. In 5 years you may change the way your christmas lights work, or add automatic blinds in the bedroom. X10 makes it easy for an end user to perform those tasks.

Agreed. I'm currently being trained on our comfort products in fact, most of which at x10 based. Our HMS/ALC solutions really threw me for a loop on how customizable they were. You can setup a huge array of lighting scenes and situational events for your lighting (we get some crazy requests from our installers too). Most of which are easily learned by the end user with a little reading. The software interface is pretty straightforward which I wasn't expecting considering the complexity of hooking one of these things up.