My Home Automation Backboard Project

[Ultrajones]

I spent about 3 days moving all my home automation equipment out of my office to my basement. It took me about 4 hours just do disconnect everything :-)

I ended up installing a 4 x 4 plywood backboard and installed a 14" and 28" structured wiring cabinets (puchased at Home Depot) and connected them with PVC conduit. I wish I would have done this years ago.

In the 28" cabinet:

• Brultech Energy Monitoring Model (ECM-1240)
• Elk M1XSP - HAI Thermostat
• Elk M1XSP - Insteon Lighting
• Elk M1XEP - Ethernet module

In the 14" cabinet:

• TEMP08 - 1 Wire Network (4 temperature sensors, 1 humidity sensor)
• HA7Net - 1 Wire Network (4 temperature sensors, 1 humidty sensor)
• Elk M1XOVR - Soon to power my 5 zone sprinkler system

Regards,
Ultrajones

[TechHA]

Details Man, Details!

Would love to see some details on your setup. What's in the cans and such.

[pcgeek]

Nice!

[gilly]

Re: home automation

In our experience it is important that we be involved in the early planning stage with any system of significance. This process enables us to tailor the system to fulfill its initial objectives, while making provision for future expansion and modifications. We often find that we are able to provide useful ideas to our clients - ideas that they may not have considered previously or perhaps were unaware that they could be incorporated. The balance of this work phase is devoted to:
-------------------------------------------------
http://www.zigbee.eu/

• An examination of the functional attributes of each room, or area;
• Identification of the types of equipment for the area, and the level of integration required to facilitate automation within the home or building;
• Defining zones of common functionality;
• Preliminary assessment of current and future needs for the system.

[Ultrajones]

Latest Update

I thought I would share the final version of my Backboard Project. It was fun

In the 28" cabinet:

• Brultech Energy Monitoring Model ECM-1240
• ISY-99I - Insteon Lighting controlled by Elk M1
• EDS HA7Net - 1 Wire Network (4 temperature sensors, 1 humidty sensor) controlled by HomeSeer.
• EDS OWServer- 1 Wire Network (4 temperature sensors, 1 humidty sensor) controlled by HomeSeer.

In the 14" cabinet:

• Elk M1XEP - Ethernet module.
• Elk M1XOVR - Powers 5 zone sprinkler system controlled by Elk M1 and HomeSeer.
• ELK-M1DBH (M1 Data Bus Hub) - Connects to ELK-M1KP3, Elk M1XOVR, ELK-M1XRF2G.
• Elk M1XSP - HAI Thermostat controlled by Elk M1 and HomeSeer.

On the shelf:

• Wowway Cable modem
• D-Link 825 Xtreme N Dual Band Gigabit Router - Dual band technology to support 2.4GHz & 5GHz wireless signals at the same time.
• D-Link DGS-2208 Gigabit Switch
• HP MediaSmart EX495 Windows Home Server - 5.5 TB of storage providing backup to all PCs and MACs, streams music, home movies, pictures, recorded TV archives, etc ...
• HP Pavilion Slimline PC - Headless PC which hosts HomeSeer, dual tuner HDTV/SDTV SageTV server and Brultech EngineG and Dashboard.
• Pyle Amp - Provides power for HomeSeer speaker clients.

Regards,
Ultrajones

[Guest]

looks great, no wire mess and such

[nojstevens]

Nice UltraJones.

Are you planning any Ultra Plugins for the ECM-1240? I don't have mine linked to HS as I prefer the web interface that comes with it - but I see that the new version allows you to forward the packets on so it would be possible to also interface with HS aswell as using their software/Google Powermeter

Jon

[heatvent]

UltraJones, I see you are a SageTV user. Have you ever thought of had interest in developing a plugin for Sage to have the ability to see/control devices from the Sage GUI?

[TeleFragger]

how do you like the mediasmart? do you have homeseer installed on it or the slimpc?
i was going to buy one.. but im running
whs
foxconn mobo
x3210 xeon quadcore 2.13
3gb ram
3 drives

i like the idea of smartmedia but believe it is underpowered to run as a nas and homeseer machine.... but you can open it and add more memory and faster cpu (warranty voided at that point)

nice setup man!!!!!

[buvens]

Looks nice.

Funny how we start small and down the road it gets to the point we have to go back and make it look better.

Guess that's the fun of it.

[Ultrajones]

Nice UltraJones.

Are you planning any Ultra Plugins for the ECM-1240? I don't have mine linked to HS as I prefer the web interface that comes with it - but I see that the new version allows you to forward the packets on so it would be possible to also interface with HS aswell as using their software/Google Powermeter

Jon

Yes, the UltraECM HSPI plug-in is pretty much done but I cannot test it long enough because the Brultech EngineG software won't stay running for long than 24 hours. Brultech states I am the only one reporting an issue. I am thinking about rebuilding my HomeSeer system from 64 to 32 bits, but not sure if that will fix the issue.

[Ultrajones]

UltraJones, I see you are a SageTV user. Have you ever thought of had interest in developing a plugin for Sage to have the ability to see/control devices from the Sage GUI?

I have taken on too many projects at the moment, so I don't have the time. I need 36 hours in a day!

[Ultrajones]

how do you like the mediasmart? do you have homeseer installed on it or the slimpc?
i was going to buy one.. but im running
whs
foxconn mobo
x3210 xeon quadcore 2.13
3gb ram
3 drives

i like the idea of smartmedia but believe it is underpowered to run as a nas and homeseer machine.... but you can open it and add more memory and faster cpu (warranty voided at that point)

nice setup man!!!!!

HomeSeer is running on the HP Slimline PC. I only use the HP MediaSmart EX495 for its intended purpose. I bet if I added more RAM to the MediaSmart server it could run my HomeSeer instance.