One Box To Rule Them All

For years I have wanted and worked towards a wired home. I want to have music, video, photos, internet, and other types of data available in all rooms at all times, but I didn't want a computer in every room, nor do I want to - nor can I - spend thousands on some high-tech, off-the-shelf system that is operated by sleek, wireless touch pads like something out of a James Bond movie.

So I pulled wires for cable TV, internet, and phone in to 7 rooms of the house. The confluence of all of the cables is in a cabinet in the butler's pantry where it all meets in a Steren home networking box. This was a good start. The router in there is wireless N, but I've found that connection rates drop by as much as 50% just 2 rooms away, so all of the wires are worth it in my opinion.

Next, for $199 I plugged an HP Media Vault in to the router. This is an NAS with Media Server, for the techno-savey out there. For others, think tiny computer with no keyboard, monitor, or mouse and just one button on the front. The HP Media Vault works as a file server, media streamer, and as a print server for the printer that is plugged in to it. This is all located in the same cabinet as the Steren box. It is pretty much idiot proof and works great. There is little or no configuration. Just plug everything in and turn it on. Anything I put on the Media Vault is available to any computer in the house and any computer in the house can print to the printer plugged in to it Media Vault.

Next, I installed a $50 TV card in to my PC. This allowed me to record TV in the same way Tivo or a DVR would. The software downloads program guides from the cable company and it is just a matter of clicking on a show to record it. You can set it up to record the same show every night or week. The shows are recorded to the Media Vault. Along with all of my photos, and CDs I ripped, the Media Vault now has all of my media and documents. I hate Suddenlink cable and shudder at the thought of giving them more than the $23 I pay for their service now, so I don't get a DVR from them. I'm half tempted to get an HD antenna and dump Suddenlink altogether.

Now I needed something to bring it all together. I don't mind laying in bed with the netbook propped on my chest to watch a TV show, but that would never cut it for the parlor.

I briefly looked at Google TV, but it kind of seems like it is Not Ready For Prime Time. Even if I went that way, I'm not sure it would have accomplished everything I wanted. What I ended up buying was a Sony Playstation 3 for $299. Who would have thought a game console would have been the key to bringing everything together in the parlor.

Here is a list of what the PS3 will do:

• Play music CDs
• Play DVDs
• Play Blue Ray discs
• Built in web browser
• Stream TV and movies off Netflix
• Stream TV off Hulu
• Stream recorded movies off the Media Vault
• Stream recorded TV off the Media Vault
• Stream music ripped from CDs off the Media Vault
• View photos off the Media Vault

All of that and it is actually smaller than the DVD player it replaced! If that weren't enough, the remote is wireless, not infrared, so you don't need to point at the TV, and it recharges when it is plugged in to the console, so you never need to replace batteries!

Oh, and apparently the PS3 will also play video games, but I haven't gotten that far yet. Don't own any video games, not a problem. You can download them from the PS3 store that is accessed through the console. There are free demos of a lot of the games, too. This is probably starting to read like a paid endorsement for the Sony® PlayStation® 3. I wish it was, because I could use the money, but it isn't. The PS3 really does all of that and it does it well. I think what impressed me the most was how fast the system comes up. It is minor, but this is something that has always bothered me about my DVD player. After pushing the On button I had to wait close to 20 seconds for the tray to slide open. What the hell is it doing in all of that time?!?!

The Netflix app is really impressive. I'm amazed at the quality of the picture. For $9.99 a month I can stream what I want and get DVDs in the mail, which are ordered through the PS3! When streaming TV there is a momentary laps in quality in the first 10 seconds and then after that the quality is as good or better than live TV. I have low-end DSL from At&T for $19.99 a month. If I upped the service from AT&T, that first 10 seconds would probably improve, but that's probably not going to happen.

So, I'm not a gamer, I own no video games, but I own a PS3 and I love it! Go figure.

Hard Wired

It was not without its difficulties, and in fact, its not quite finished, but 99% of the work for home-networking is done. This required hours under the house over the past few days. That just gets harder and harder every year. I no longer refer to it as a “crawl-space”. From now on it will be called a “slither-space”. It is just brutal working under there. But its done, that’s the important thing.

First, the finished product….



I was able to get the trim on, but no doors yet. I hope to do that next weekend. The cabinet is 16-inches deep, so I can fit the printer in there and keep it open. On the top-left is the NAS and the router. You really can’t do anything with the NAS once its turned out, same with the router, so it should not be a problem having it on the top shelf.



Below that is the Stern box with all of the wires. I’m reasonably happy with it. The thing I don’t like are the little plastic tabs that keep the individual nodes in. I broke two putting them in. If I had to pull them out and move them I would most likely break more. Aside from that, they seem well made. This routs telephone, TV, and internet to 7 rooms.

The other issue are the face-plates that mount on the wall to hold the keystone jacks for phone, cable, and networking. The original one I put in the kitchen was sized for a GFCI faceplate. I could get a faceplate to match all of the other cast brass faceplates in the house. I can’t find those anymore. Everything now is the basic ivory faceplate. Its not the end of the world, really. All of these will be behind a piece of furniture, so you will never really see them.

Now for the problems. ...





In the parlor, back in the 20s, they mounted an outlet in the baseboard. In fact, all four outlets in the house they mounted on the baseboards back in the 20s. This means that for the sake of consistency I needed to mount the new box for cable, phone, and internet next to the outlet on the baseboard. I did not like cutting in to the baseboards, but it needed to be done.

The big problem with this is that the wall that the baseboard is on is the wall with the pocket door. It was just a really touch operation. And wouldn’t you know it, where I decided to mount the box was directly over a doubled-joist. It took forever to drill the holes and I broke one of my 54-inch drill bits. Those things are like $60 each. I eventually got the wires pulled, but what should have been a half-hour job took and hour and a half.

Once everything was in place everything worked except the networking. Phone and cable work fine, but I’m not wiring the CAT6 keystone jacks properly and it is really frustrating. I won’t go in to what I tried and why I think it doesn’t work. After reading several things on-line and trying to follow the tiny, tiny instructions that came with the jacks, I just sort of put it on hold for now.

I was going to call my brother and ask him. He did this for a living for many years. I was concerned that I would get in to an endless cycle of miscommunication. (No, with your finger in the top tab while holding the clip face-up, clip the white/green wire in to the clip at the bottom. No, face-up!). I’m going to take one in to work with me tomorrow and beg our net-adim for help.

Turn On-Tune In

Ok, I’m not quite there yet, but its getting there. It is amazing how much you can get done with the warm weather and long days.



After mowing the lawn, I got the cabinet hung, mounted the Stern box, and installed 2 electrical outlets. They are just roughed-in at this point. If I had a ground coupling I could have finished the wiring tonight. Instead, I'll need to make a trip to the hardware store tomorrow for a 10 cent part. {Groan!}

Next I'll trim-out the cabinet with a cornice and a base trim, and then this weekend make the doors. After that, I’ll finish off the beadboard and start to think about the ceiling. Really, I should be thinking about the ceiling right now. I’m leaning towards a tin ceiling, which means I should order it now.

I also need to finish the floor, trim out the doors, and then paint. Its getting close.

Low-Tech /High-Tech

I was able to get the California Cooler/Server Cabinet assembled today. It wasn’t too bad. Getting the first few pieces together is the hardest. Its kind of like herding cats. Once it gets stable though, its just a matter of driving in nails.



It will look better with paint. As I said in an earlier post, this was all made out of the remnants of beadboard that I salvaged from D&D Motors. Like the old California Coolers from the first half of the century, the shelves are slats to allow ventilation. The right-hand side will get another shelf once it is on the wall. I’m not sure if the left hand side will need one, or if there will even be room for one.






This cabinet will be hung on the wall were that Stern box is. I’ll need to see how much room is left once it is in place. That won’t be for a few days. I’ll pull the Stern box off, mount the cabinet, run an electrical outlet in to each side, and then put the Stern box back. Once I get the electrical done I can finish the beadboard wainscoting. After that I can start to make the doors.

Scraps of Scraps

During the week this week I was able to get the panels glued up for the cabinet that will hide all of the telecom and home networking hardware for the house. The final dimensions will be 4-feet wide, 3-feet/8-inches high, and 16-inches deep.



I used the remainder of the salvaged D&D Motors beadboard for the panels. This is what was deemed unusable for the laundry room. I had several of the 10-foot lengths left over and I was able to glean enough 4-foot lengths for the side and center panels.



Then, the pieces that were not usable for that got ripped down to 3-inch wide pieces for the face-frame and back-frame. I’m not sure if “back-frame” is a technical term for the back of the cabinet, but in this case it is apt. The inside, back wall of the cabinet will mostly be the plaster wall. This makes it much easier to run all of the wires and electrical up in to the cabinet.

Then, what was left over from the face-frames got ripped down in to 2-inch wide, 2-foot long pieces that will make up the slat shelves in the cabinet. As I mentioned the other day, I’m borrowing an idea from the turn of the century to make this a vented cabinet so the hardware in the cabinet can stay cool.



The cabinet that will go below it is a salvage piece I originally bought for the kitchen. It is 42-inches high, 48-inches wide, and 24-inches deep. These cabinets will be just outside the laundry room and the height of this lower cabinet will make it nice to fold close on. At least for me, anyway. Both of them will be fixed in the corner and look like built-ins. I’ll trim out the upper cabinet with a 1X3 cornice.

Tomorrow I’m going to assemble the upper cabinet and then the last thing to do for the cabinet will be to make the doors. I’m going to do mortise and tenon, raised panel doors. I did this once before for the dumb waiter style door that separates the dining room from the kitchen. The practice will do me good for when I get to the dining room cabinets. The last time I raised the panels on the table saw. I’m going to do it on the router this time.

On The Home (Net) Front

I got soooo lucky. Four years ago or so, when I rewired the house for electrical, I pulled two coaxial cable TV and 2 networking cables from under the house all the way up in to the attic. At the time I knew I would be doing this project, but I wasn’t really sure where the brain center for the house would be. I knew it was going to either be some place in the scullery or the butler’s pantry, so I bundled the excess cable under the house and strapped it to a floor joist. That is where is has been until this weekend.

So now came time to fish the cable from under the house and in to the wall I built a few years back. This wall divided the butler’s pantry making one third the laundry room and the other 2/3 the now slightly reduced in size butler’s pantry.

I picked a spot on the wall for the Stern Home Networking panel, drilled the holes and fished in the cable. I was sure I was going to be on my back in the dirt splicing cable. I just knew there would never be enough and I was dreading this job. As it turned out is was almost exactly enough. Each of the 4 cables that go to the attic made it in to the box with about a foot to spare. Whew!







In total there are 2 home-runs to the phone company's box. There is one home-run to the cable company's box. Then there is a network, phone and cable TV to both the kitchen and front parlor. And finally, the two network and two coaxial cables to the attic. These will get split to run to the four bedrooms.

Inside the box will be the distribution hubs I showed in another post a few weeks back. There will also be room for the router. I’m building a cabinet with no back on it that will hide this box. Once the cabinet is up I will run two electrical outlets in to the cabinet. This cabinet will also hold the NAS (the poor mans network server), and a networked printer or two.

Because heat build-up inside a closed cabinet could be an issue, I’m borrowing an idea from the beginning of the century. Remember the California Cooler (You can read about it here). That was designed to keep things cool with open shelves and vents to the outside. Instead of vents to the outside, my cabinet will have open shelving – slats of wood, along with an open bottom and top. With the doors closed it will look like any other wall mounted cabinet, but inside there will be plenty of air flow. I’m going to make it out of remnants of the salvaged beadboard I use for the laundry room.

That is the plan anyway. We’ll see how it works.

Fast Home Networking

I bet you thought I forgot all about this, didn’t you. As much as I’d like to, it seems a bit of a necessity these days. And even if it isn’t a necessity, I would feel negligent not to take it in to consideration, given the level of work I’m doing on the house.

The reason I need to revisit it now is because the butler’s pantry will be the brain center of the house. (I start plastering tomorrow) I’ve planned this all along, so its now time to put the plan in to action. You see those jobs done on shows like This Old House where they have computer controlled lighting and other whiz-bang features that cost more than I spent on my kitchen and bathroom put together. That is not really what I’m doing. I just want a central place to house the router and NAS (Network Attach Storage), along with a central hub for cable TV and phone. And please, nobody suggest a wireless system. We’ve been over that before in previous posts. I’m pulling wire. End of story.

Anyway, I found a site on Ebay that has just about everything a person like me needs to do a project like I’m doing. The line of products they carry is called Fast Home Home Networking. You start with a box that you then mount different modules for phone, network, and TV. It is fairly straight forward, and doesn’t break the bank. It may not be the most attractive thing in an 1895 butler’s pantry, but it is better than a 66 punchdown block mounted to plywood.

Here are the basic components.


This is the mounting case. This one if 15X19 inches and they also make a smaller version. The phone and cable lines come in to this box. Then, inside that you mount the various blocks for dispersing the services throughout the house. Each module handles 6 connections, which is perfect for a house this size.

The Networking Hub


The Telephone Hub


Cable TV hub


These items, along with some crimpers and cabling come to about $200. In addition to this, there are wallplates that that hold 2 coaxial and 2 CAT6/Phone lines each. They take a GFCI face plate, so I can put on the brass face plates that match everything else in the house. With the brass faceplate, these run about $15 each.

The Home Networking Front

It’s been a little quite on the front as of late. Mainly this is a budget issue. I was willing to take on a little debt for a kitchen or a bathroom, but this is definitely a pay-as-you-go project. The slow pace also has a little to do with R&D, as well. What I will be doing for the front parlor is pretty much squared away. It is the other rooms that I’m still not sure what to do with.

The whole Thin Client idea may or may not work out. You can get a base model for around $200, but that won’t really do what I need it to do with out having a server. In case you forgot, a Thin Client is a very small, solid state computer with no hard drive. The benefits of this are no noise, low heat, and compact size. The idea is that the Thin Client hangs from the back of a monitor and pulls any software off of a network or another PC.



The HP Media Vault I bought is not good enough to act as a server for the low-end thin client. That’s not to say I’m unhappy with the Media Vault. It does exactly what I hoped it would do. It is just that in order to run the low-end thin client, I would need to have a server or PC dedicated to serving applications to the thin client. To do it with out a server I would need to spend upwards of $450 on a higher-end thin client. That is a bit much for the kitchen.



In my hunt for thin clients I also saw this little thing. It is a Chip PC Jack PC. This is another type of Thin Client that mounts in the wall like an electrical outlet and then you just plug in a monitor, keyboard, speakers, etc. These run around $300. I really haven’t had time to investigate this too much, but I think it is a cool idea. I’m not sure I would want to knock a bunch of holes in walls for these in every room. They are really not that attractive. The thought is more to mount this on to another surface, like say, inside of a cabinet or a small desk or something. Maybe I could even Steampunk a small box to mount it in. I would then plug that in to the more universal jack that is mounted in the wall. Again, the benefits are small profile, and no noise.

This brings up the whole issue of putting holes in walls. Every time I talk about this project, whether it is here, to friends, or at other Old House related sites, I get comments about knocking holes in plaster walls for cables. Let’s face it, no walls are pristine and without holes. Everyone has light switches, electrical outlets, phone, and cable TV mounted in boxes cut in to the walls.

When I bought this place, if you counted up all of the boxes mounted in walls for light switches, electrical outlets, cable TV and phone I had a total of 13. There were 4 electrical outlets and 9 wall switches. Think about that. A 3,500 sq. ft house with a total of 18 rooms, including 4 kitchens and 4 bathrooms, and there were a total of 13 boxes in the walls. A modern kitchen might have that many just in the one room.

Most of the electrical came from industrial conduit that snaked through the house. The later addition rooms still had pull-chain lights on the ceiling. All of the phone and cable hook-ups were strung on the outside of the house and then came in through holes drilled through the side of the house. It was just about the most unattractive way to do it. I pulled miles of cable and conduit out and off of the house. I think the only reason the original rooms in the house had wall switches were because Mr. Petch was an electrician and installed them at the time of construction. If not for that, I’m sure all of the rooms would have still only had ceiling fixtures will pull chains when I bought the place in 2002.

So, yes, I will be putting more holes in the walls. In order to get rid of the spiders web of cables strung on the outside of the house, and to get rid of all of the conduit strung on the inside of the house, not to mention bringing the house up to code, I’ve cut many, many holes in the walls for electrical outlets and to install boxes for ceiling fixtures, which were just screwed to the ceiling when I first bought the place. I gotten very good at it, and never damaged the plaster. To date, I still have only one combination phone and TV box in the house. That is in the remodeled kitchen.

Each room that will get telecom installed will have one box that will have cables for TV, phone, and internet. All of these will be in a place where a desk or cabinet will be, and you will most likely never see it once the room is finished. The plate that the cables mount to excepts a GFCI type face plate, so I will be able to use the same cast brass face plate that will match what I’ve used in all of the other rooms.

It is not an ideal solution, but I really don’t think wireless is ready for prime-time. Yes, I know, there are people out there that have wireless routers and they work fine. Well, mine didn’t, and I plan on doing a lot more with it than just downloading email and surfing the web.

A friend of mine pointed out a few weeks ago that his wireless router works good except when the chimney gets in the way. This goes a long way to explaining why I had so much trouble with my wireless router. I have two huge brick chimneys that run through both floors on the interior of the house. Obviously, Mr. Eugene Mowery was not considering wireless internet transmissions when he designed the house in 1895. I think I’ll let him slide on this, though.

Perhaps in 10 years wireless will be fast enough and have a strong enough signal that it will be ready to do what I want it to do. I’m not willing to wait that long though, so yes, I will be cutting 4 or 5 more 2X4 inch holes in my walls over the next 2 years. I think the historical integrity of the plaster walls can withstand loosing another one quarter of a square foot of plaster. Besides, how many can say they have no modern sheetrock in their homes at all? And how many have no phone or cable in their walls at this time?

So let he/she who is still with all of their pristine, original plaster walls cast the first stone.

Rip, Burn, Skin

It sounds painful, doesn’t it? Given that this is a house blog one would naturally think I’m writing this from the emergency room, or maybe even a hospital bed. No, this the lingo of media files on computers. Its like they got a bunch of stoned snowboarders to come up with the lexicon of media when it comes to computers.

You no longer download and copy files, you rip and burn them. You don’t change the look and feel of a program, you put a new skin on it. This is the same reason we no longer wear stocking caps, but instead we wear skull caps. Its like, totally rad, to give mundane objects and tasks names that sound menacing and intense. It gives the allure of danger while sitting in the comfort of Mom and Dad’s basement.

So I pent my Sunday ripping CDs on to the Media Vault. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be. I pictured countless hours of selecting files, navigating through folders, copy files, er… I mean burning files. Then I would need to rename them all to make them legible, and make sure the player knew where they were. I thought I was going to be a painfully arduous task and I was dreading it.

It turned out to just about the easiest thing I’ve done on a computer in a long, long time. Someone actually did not have their head up their ass when they thought this through. I used Windows Media Player 11 to do the cop… Ripping. Once I told the Media Player that I would be storing the CD files, er…daggers of music, the process was surprisingly automated.

It turns out there is a lot more information on the CD than just the music. There is an image of the CD cover, the genre of music, artists name, song name, the year it was recorded, and the total running time for each song. Once the CD was ripped, the tray opened and I just popped in another one. I barely had to pay attention to it. I was able to blast through more than 50 CDs while watching football on Sunday.



The CD s are also rated as they are ripped. I’m not really sure what the rating is based on. They all started out with 3 out of 5 stars with the exception of one Velvet Underground CD that has a rating of 4.5. At least who ever rated that one knows what they are talking about.



Once they’ve all been ripped to the media vault they can be viewed by just the CD cover, or viewed with the song list for each CD. You can sort alphabetically, or by genre, time, rating, or year.



To play, uh, I mean BLAST the CDs you just double click on a CD cover or individual song. You can also open a play list and drag and drop songs from multiple CDs to the play list. Play lists can be saved and played again. The whole process was surprisingly simple….er, I mean totally wicked and awesome.

Kingdom of Media

I got the HP Media Vault in the mail about a week ago. I’m not going to say it is the best thing to ever happen to home networking, but I will say it is easy to set up and use, it does what the advertising claimed, and it didn’t cost much.

So far so good.

For those not familiar with it, The Media Vault is a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device. If you have DSL then you most likely have a router. The media vault plugs in to the router and gives you a way to share files with any other computer plugged in to the router. The idea is to store all music, video, and photo files on the vault and then be able to access them from any PC in the house.

The unit was $214 delivered to my door. It is about 4-inches wide and stands a little under a foot tall. It looks like a very small computer. You plug in the power, then plug in a network cable from the router, and then turn it on. That is the extent of the set up. There is software to install for some bells and whistles, but the software is not necessary to use the device. It has a web interface for tweaking the settings, but there are very few to tweak and the web interface is simple and easy to use.

Tech Lingo Alert
It can also act as a web server and FTP server. This means that you can set up a web page for the house, or configure it to be able to allow you to access files from a computer outside the house. Individual folders can be password protected and the web interface for settings can be password protected. All folders are blind shares by default.

You create folders on the device either through the web interface or with My Computer, and access them by mapping network drives, just like any other network. You really don’t need to know how to do this because the software that comes with it does this for you. When I first set it up I tried to access it from my laptop, which has a bad CD Drive in it. I was not able to install the software and the 4 default folders are set up as blind shares, so I couldn’t see them to be able to map them. Instead, I pointed my browser to HTTP:\\HPMediavault and after that I knew the folder names, so I could just map to \\hpmediavault\foldername\.

Expanding the storage is done through a pull-out tray on the front panel. Any internal, 3.5-inch SATA drive can be put in to the tray to add more hard drive space if you need it. It is not a USB type set up, but a real hard drive installation, only made simpler. No opening the case. It does have 3 USP ports on it and it can act as a print server by plugging any printer in to one of the three ports. Again, very simple to do.

The one potentially bad thing is that the OS is a stripped down Linux kernel that is proprietary to the media vault. If there are hard drive problems there are no tools available to try and salvage some of the data. Any failure is absolute failure. The up side of this is that the kernel is built for speed. It does nothing but file I/O.
End Tech Lingo

It has 300 gigabytes of storage, which is enough for a lot of videos and music. One full-length movie runs about 1 gigabyte in size. The device came with The Bourne Identity preinstalled, which was supplied by CinemaNow.Com, a movie download site. It also came with an offer to download two more movies from CinemaNow.Com. At CinemaNow.Com you can buy or rent movies. The prices run $2-$5 for renting and $5-$20 for buying. It seems like an OK service, although the selection seemed a bit limited. I first tried to find the movie Children of Men, which came out last summer, and it wasn’t available. A few other movies that have come out in the past few years weren’t on the site either. I ended up getting Crash and Kingdom Of Heaven.

The movies play beautifully off the media vault. I watched them on a 20-inch flat panel monitor, with external speakers and a small sub woofer. The picture and sound are very nice. You forget that you’re watching the movie off a computer. The next step will be to get the movie to output to the TV. That will happen next month.

All in all, I’m very happy with it. It seems to accomplish a lot of what I wanted, without having to fool with a full-blown networking server. I still may play around with that idea, but for now, this will go a long way to getting my home network up and running, and it is extremely easy to set up and use.

So This Is How It Is

I’ve changed my mind again. Can you believe it? I know, it’s a shocker.

Anyway, I’ve decided to put off the ClarkConnect server for now. I will be doing it, but I’ll wait until I’m further along in the process. I think I can do most of what I want with the HP Media Vault (See earlier post). As I’ve come to learn, the Media Vault falls in to a category of products referred to as NAS, or Network Attached Storage.

They are basically mini-file servers that are tuned to just serving files on a network. They can be plugged in to a router (This could be a DSL or cable modem/router) and serve media files to any other PC on the router. At least this is my understanding. We’ll see if I understand this correctly sometime next week when I get it.

If I’m wrong, and I really do need the server to use the media vault, well, I was planning to do that anyway, and the media vault is only $214.00 with shipping and taxes. That is a pretty amazing price, if you ask me.

So, lets say I have a PC in the parlor hooked up to the TV, and some external speakers. I can stream video to the TV and music to the speakers off the media vault. I should then also be able to surf the web from the same PC. In theory this should work. I could be wrong about this, and we’ll just need to wait and see.

The server would give me additional benefits, such as act as a web and email server. You can set up user accounts, and just manage the whole system better. The dream is to one day stop paying money each month to another company to host my web site. With a server running ClarkConnect, I could do that myself.

The draw back to this is that if I have other PCs in the house I could use them all for email but I would need to make sure one PC is dedicated to downloading mail to an inbox on the PC. If I have three PCs all downloading mail, it would get confusing. This is where the server would come in handy. What I will need to do is set other PCs to leave a copy of the mail on the server and have one download the mail and delete the mail from the server.

I realize, that to the non-tech person reading this, it all may seem a bit much, and frankly, I agree. This gets back to my very first post on this subject. It is just all too complicated. Once it is set up and running, it needs little maintenance. The issue is setting it all up and trouble shooting it in the event that something goes wrong.

Someday, someone is going to come up with a box that you have on a wall in the garage. You plug in a phone line and a cable TV line and then you run a single cable to any number of smart devices in the house. You turn them on and identify yourself by either a thumb print or voice recognition and then you have access to TV/video/music/internet/phone and what ever else comes along. It someday needs to get to that point, because this is no way to live. One hundred years from now someone is going to stumble on to these series of blog entries and think, “Wow! What savages!”

I’m All Over The Place On This One

It seems like I’ve fallen in to a tech world black hole of acronyms and emerging technology. The more I read, it seems like just about everyone out there is either doing some form of what I’m trying to do, or trying to sell something that will do it. There is just soooo much to chose from out there, it is a little bewildering.

This is a quote from one forum threads I read, and this is one of the better written ones…

"I've been doing this exact same thing for a while now with opensuse, but Ubuntu would work just fine as well. Just be sure to install SSH before you dump it in the closet

You can use samba to share files with windows and NFS to share files with linux. This is how I do it. For the streaming, you dont really need to stream the A/V, you can just use samba/NFS and play the files like they were local. If you really want to stream, you can use VLC, but I beleive you'll have to leave it running on a VNC session on the server.

For RAID, you can use linux software RAID. This is what I use and its worked great. I was confused at first with it because it RAIDs partitions rather than drives. So you have to make RAID partitons on the drives, and then create the array with whatever partitons you choose, and then create a filesystem on the array."


Two weeks ago I would have gotten very little of that, but now a lot of it makes sense. The one thing I am almost entirely sure of now, though, is that I will be doing a Linux based file server for the home. I’ve drifted away from that idea a few times over the past few weeks. Why, just Thursday I envisioned a house filled with Ipod enabled devices. I could just carry around a 30 gb Ipod with music and video on it and plug it in where ever I was. That idea quickly died a few hours later.

I’m not entirely sure on the cost yet, but it seems that I can have a robust file server, with plenty of storage, and with all of the routers and cabling for the entire house, for around a $1000. This would enable internet, TV, video, and music to the 6 rooms that will have cable running to them, and to a lesser extent, the entire house with some wireless additions. It may sound like a lot to some, but really its not. This should be suitable to do what I want to do for several years. I would imagine that once the infrastructure is in place, there would need to be minor upgrades every 5 to 10 years.

Of course, this is just the supply side of it. Even though the rooms would be enabled, there would be additional cost (TV, computer, etc) that would be needed in the individual rooms. I’m not really concerned with that at this point, because most of the rooms in the house aren’t at that stage yet. Really, just the parlor, kitchen, and one bedroom are there. You need to think of this part of the project as more of an infrastructure part, like electrical wiring and plumbing, rather than the end user stage.

I have found some more cool devices to think about. Most of the content below is marketing copy directly from the product site. This is not me endorsing it.

HP Media Vault mv2010 (300GB) - $199
* • Expandable home network storage for data backup and sharing
* • 300GB—holds up to 139,000 photos, 69,000 songs, or 90 hours of video in best mode
* • Media streaming to home entertainment center
* • Supports up to three printers
* • Automatic backups 24 x 7



Seagate® Mirra™ Personal Server – Price Unknown
The Mirra Personal Server lets you:

* Access—Retrieve digital content via the Internet any time.
* Share—Share files with anyone simply and securely.
* Sync—Sync content automatically between networked computers.
* Protect—Continuous data protection for networked Macintosh and Windows computers.
* Enjoy—Connect to your content from wherever you are.



Video Lan – Free

VLC media player (initially VideoLAN Client) is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG, DivX, Ogg, and many more) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. However in recent years it has also become a extremely powerful server to stream live and on demand video in several formats to our network and the Internet.

It started as a student project at the French École Centrale, Paris but is now a worldwide project with developers from 20 countries. (more).

VLC is built in a modular way. This means that you can choose from a range of different modules to decide how to control VLC and how to display the video output.


ATI TV Wonder™ 650 Combo PCI Express –$120

This is another TV Tuner card for the PC. From what I’ve read about the few PC/TV tuners, most are not really good enough to replace a TV. This one has promise though. This is the most recent review I could find. This card also has 2 tuners on it, so you can watch one and record off the other.

ATI Wonder 650 Review


Twonky Media – $40

The PacketVideo MediaServer enables you to share your multimedia throughout your home. It is available for many different platforms and interworks with a large variety of client devices including XBox 360™, Sony PS3™ and Sony PSP™. TwonkyMedia requires fewer resources and is faster than other UPnP media servers, and provides more features that help users enjoy large media collections. If you care about usability, TwonkyMedia is the right choice. It even enables you to define your own personal navigation structure. Whether you are an end user or a device manufacturer - we have the right license model for you.


So much to chose from….

What The Heck-a-Roonie For

I’ve gotten a few emails and some blog comments asking why I would even want or need a home network. It’s difficult to say, exactly. I guess more than anything, I just want it. I’m a geek, and I’m proud of it. I think it would be cool to have a home network and be able to stream music and video to every room in the house. Wireless will never cut it for that. At least not at the moment.

I’ve decided I need a better plan of attack, though. I’ve been kind of all over the place with hardware and software ideas, and not really sure which way to go. As I hinted at in my last post, I don’t think there is One Way to do this, on the hardware end. That is to say, each room, or type of room, is different. What works in the parlor may not be appropriate for the kitchen, and that may not work for the bedrooms.

I need to start with the basics so I can try things out. I think the over all success of this is going to come down to software. Hardware is an important part of the equation, but you can only do so much with cables and routers. Poorly written software will sink any project, I don’t care how good the hardware is.

Of course, I can’t really play with software until I at least have a basic server up and running, so that is where I need to start. The good news is, I was wrong about the cost of the ClarkConnect server software. I said it was $375 for a 10 user license, but it is really free for someone like me. There is a small business edition that is $375, and an Enterprise edition that is for larger implementations that costs more, but the homer version is free. This is fairly common in the Linux world. The caveat is, you get no technical support with the home version, but there is an active user base that is there to help.

So that part is taken care of. I downloaded the 475 MB ClarkConnect distribution today. Now what I need is the box (e.g. a computer to load the software on and act as a server). Once I get that I can set up a mini network and play around with it to see what works and what doesn’t.

Dear Santa,

So, I’ve been working on my Christmas list the past few weeks. Now, I don’t want to get duplicates of some of the items on the list, so we need to coordinate here. Once you’ve picked something from the list that you want to get me, email me to make sure someone else hasn’t already selected it. I think if we all work together, this can be a very nice Christmas for all of us….Especially me.

I’ve been looking more at my options for bringing The Petch house in to the 21st Century. I want something that will work, but I also want to avoid what I call the Ma & Pa Kettle syndrome, and I don’t want this to cost more than the kitchen remodel. It’s a balancing act.

If you’re not familiar with Ma & Pa Kettle, they made several movies in the late 40s and early 50s. They were dim-witted hicks with more kids than they had teeth. They always seemed to get stuck in these ridiculous situations because they were just so stupid. (Google Ma & Pa Kettle Math to give you some idea.) The one movie I remember was “The Further Adventures of Ma and Pa Kettle”. They win a 1950s House of The Future where everything is automated, push button, and ridiculously overly complicated. Match that with the Kettle Clan and hilarity ensued.

I’ve been getting some comments from people that have been very helpful, but some of them really over shoot the mark on what I’m want. That doesn’t mean that I want the comments to stop. The Myth TV link is very nice, but way too complicated. If I need to fish through menus to watch a TV show, it seems to complicated to me. Part of this comes down to the fact that I’m not a big TV watcher. It’s not that I don’t watch more than my fair share of TV, I do. It is more that I think the vast majority of it is so crappy that I have no intention of ever recording something for playback later unless it is a one time shot.

I don’t need 500 gigabytes of storage to store TV shows that are crap. I can’t see ever subscribing to a service like TiVo because nothing on TV is really worth that much money or effort, and what ever is worth watching will be playing again within 6 months. They just don’t write as many TV episodes as they used to. You get 12 to 15 new episodes a year of a popular TV show. Every episode will get played several times over a 52 week period, and sometimes even twice in the same week.

I’m a geek but I get easily frustrated with complicated interfaces. I think some of this comes from the fact that I write software and I pride myself on interface design. There is this need among a lot of developers to throw the kitchen sink at the software. It gets to the point that it becomes exhausting to use when you just want to do something simple. Not everything needs to be developed for the super geek. It is OK to sometimes dumb things down and give them ease of use and basic functionality.

{Four paragraph technology rant deleted here}

To get a better idea of what I’m thinking about here, think of the DVD players on a computer. You can watch a full length DVD movie on just about any computer you buy today. The old laptop I’m using even has a set of buttons on the face designed just for playing DVD movies. I’ve never used those buttons. I’ve never watched a 2 hour movie on my laptop. I’m willing to bet few people have ever sat in there home and watched a full-length movie on their computer. Why would you when you have a nice comfy couch, with a nice big TV, with a DVD player, with a remote control.

The DVD player on computers enhances the computer experience, it does not replace the TV/DVD player in the living room. What I think would be nice is to enhance the TV experience with basic computing abilities like browsing the internet. And since I’m going to be running a home network, why not throw in music that can be played in any room off the network. That is pretty much it. I have no intention of getting rid of my computer, nor do I have any intention of sitting on the couch to work on spreadsheets. Its not conducive to that sort of thing, just as the computer is not conducive to watching full length movies.

So the options are to have a TV that acts like a computer a small part of the time. Or have a computer that acts like a TV the majority of the time. I still haven’t figured out which is best, and I don’t think there is one answer to this question. More on that later….

So, here is a few of the goodies I found on-line. Some were through comments left after some of my other rants…er, I mean blog entries, and others I found by surfing. Remember, the goal is TV, Music, Internet on one screen. It needs to reasonably simple to use and not cost a lot.


Gigabyte’s HDMI & HDCP Graphics Card – It has several video output types. This would be used to get the computer video signal out to a TV, if the TV does not have VGA support. HDMI is the newest if Hi-Def sound and video technology for TVs and DVD players. I’m not sure how much this one is, but others start at around $100.


MVP Media - This gets video and music on to the TV over a LAN connection. It comes with a remote control and costs about $100. It is interesting, but I’m not sure if this is the way I would go.

Squeeze Box - I liked this idea. For around $300 you get a music player that plays streaming music over TCP/IP from the server. It has a remote, server software, and some nice features. I can't see putting one in every room, but I can see some applications for it.

TVBox 9 – This will turn an LCD computer monitor in to a TV. It is basically tuner with a remote. I runs about $200. This same company makes a plethora of TV/Computer type products with prices that are sub $100 to well over a $1000.


VideoLAN – This is an open source video streaming (server) and VLC media player (client). This one I need to read up on a lot more, but it looks like it has promise, but it does have an awful lot of bells and whistles.


MythTV – This is another open source PC Based TV system. It is just jammed packed full of features. This would be for viewing a TV signal through a PC. I can’t see doing that at this time. When the TV is so easy to use, the last thing I want to do is make it more complicated.


PCTV HD Ultimate Stick – This one I thought was interesting. It is a TV tuner on one of those USB memory sticks. You plug it in to a USB port on your computer and then hook up the coaxial cable. The stick can record up to 2 hours of video from the TV signal and it comes with a remote. $129.00


ClarkConnect – This is a Linux based, open source server software. I think it was $375 for a one-time 10 user license, or you can pay $75 a year for regular upgrades. I need to do more reading on this, but already I like it better than having to buy Windows Server 2003.

Home Network Supply – This is an Ebay store that has what seems to be – to my untrained eye, anyway – a good selection of basic hardware stuff for home telecom.


Thin Clients – This is sort of a throwback to the old main frame days when you had a drone on your desk and pulled everything from a main frame computer. I really like these. These are small computers (about the size of a 4 port router) with no hard dive. They often show them mounted on the back of the monitor. Basically it is a processor, ram, network interface card, and some ports for video and what have you. The HP ones start around $200 and go up to $500.


LCD Monitors – You can get a 19-inch one for around $200 these days. Not much more to talk about there.

Wireless Keyboard and Mouse – Take your pick. Maybe $50.

More On The Future

"You have some options. Personally I've avoid having to switch inputs on a display and just have everything streamed. This would also allow for centralized DVR functionality. It also removes the requirement for a tuner in the display.

You might want to check out the open source project MisterHouse (http://misterhouse.sourceforge.net/). This is really geared towards home automation and not media distribution, but interesting none the less.

I think what you should really look at is MythTV (http://www.mythtv.org/). You setup a MythTV backend to handle tuners, recording, etc. while multiple fontends can then access the content. There are also many available modules to check the weather, email, surf the web, play video games, and much more. It's also possible to netboot the frontend software (http://parker1.co.uk/epia_minimyth.php) so that you can easily manage deployed software to all your displays. Just think, running one CAT6 gigbait wire to each room, rather than CAT5 and coax.

Above is exactly the type of response I was hoping for. This was a comment left yesterday after my disjointed description of what I hope to achieve in the way of telecom for the house. I don’t think anything here actually achieves my goals, but then, they may not be achievable at this point.

I haven’t actually had the time to look at the different links, but it is a great start and I wanted to thank Rwohleb for taking the time to post the comment. You can be sure I’m going to be investigating all of this over the next few months.

The real issue that may be a stumbling block is the issue of the cabling I have in place. I must work with what I have. It is hard to believe that CATV is outdated, but that is just the nature of the industry. Four years ago I pulled 2 CATV and 2 Coaxial cables from under the house, up through 3 floors, and in to the attic. It is there, and it is going to stay there, and I’m going to use it. If I took the time to rip it all out and pull in CAT6 cable, by the time I got the whole system up and running, there would be CAT7 cable available.

As I write, I writing on a 6 year old lap top that has not had new software installed in years. I’m not an early adopter. I don’t play the hardware/software upgrade two-step. This goes back to my original post yesterday about wanting simple to use stuff. I don’t want to tinker with it and tweak it and then need to worry about replacing it in a few years. I just want to use it. keep it simple.

After I wrote my blog entry yesterday I started to think about all of the old and new technology in the house. The old stuff is simple to use and instantaneous. Flip a switch and the light comes. Pick up a phone receiver and the dial tone is buzzing away before you can get it to your ear. You turn on a TV and the sound and picture come up in a second at most.

My new DVD player/recorder takes a good 20 seconds to boot-up. With an old VCR you could go from power-down to be recording a tape in 10 or 15 seconds. The DVD needs to be formatted first. If I wanted to quickly start recording a DVD it would take a good 2 to 3 minutes from the time I turn on the unit until I can actually start recording.

Computers are even worse. Think of the wasted hours we’ve all spent staring at an hour glass on the screen. It’s true, they save a lot of time in that once they get going they can do some things really, really fast, but it really needs to get better. And it’s changing all of the time. The last time I replaced my TV I did it because the old one broke not because the technology was out-dated. It must get simpler and faster if I’m expected to integrate it in to my life.

In the idea above, the central idea is to have several tuners connected to a network and then stream the signal to monitors. It sounds good – hell, it sounds great – but is the technology there, and if it is, is it affordable and easy to use. If 3 people turn on TVs watching different channels, and other is playing a game, and yet another is listing to music, could the network keep up? Could you imagine getting and hour glass in the middle of a TV show.

This was why in my dream set-up the TV signal still comes in the old fashioned way. I wouldn’t want to build a whole-house system only to find out that it falls so short of the mark that only a few of the aspects of it are really usable.

Who knows where this will end up. There are a lot of options out there.

The Future Is Not Now

So this about a first look at a project I plan to start after the first of the year. I'm just sort of thinking here, with no clear plan at this point, and there is a lot of dreaming. I have an overall concept, with goals, but there is no telling what the end results will be. Basically, I want to give the 4 bedrooms, the parlor, and kitchen access to internet, TV, and music. Ideally it would be all pulled from a central location - a hub, or brain center of the house. For me this will be in the butler's pantry. I like ease of use over functionality. I think of it in terms as designing a system my Mother could use, and my Mother is about the least technologically advanced person I know.

The backend can be advanced and will need someone who knows what they are doing to maintain it, but I imagine that for the prefect system, the-end user side would be fairly simple and without a lot of hardware. When I was staying at a Hyatt hotel last month they had an in-room internet service that was pretty crappy, but fairly easy to use. You accessed the system with a wireless keyboard and the use of the TV remote and there was no username/password necessary. As I said, it was crappy, and slow, and it was also very proprietary.

I picture something like that, but hopefully done better. Ideally, in the kitchen and bedrooms there would be a small flat screen monitor, 2 small speakers, and a wireless keyboard and mouse in each room. The parlor would be the same setup, only with better speakers and a larger monitor. In a perfect world there would be no computer to turn on and wait to boot-up, and no username\password to log on. The computer side of it should be as quick and simple to use as a TV. Internet, TV and music would always be on, and email, if it was needed would be a generic account that anyone could use at anytime without a user name/password. Much like the telephone.

If a more robust system is needed for a home office or for gaming, and it most certainly would be, there is no reason why a full computer system couldn't be set up in a room where it is needed and this system could be used for TV, music, and generic internet use.

It seems what I need are monitors with a TV tuner, a CPU, memory, and network interface card. There would be inputs for cable TV and LAN, and outputs for audio, and I suppose a few USB slots would be nice. The computer part would by just another input selection. Right now my TV has input selections of TV, Component Video, HDMI, DVD, Video 1, and Video 2. The HDMI is to give a simulated high definition signal from the hi-def DVD player. I think the Component Video is another way of getting better definition form a DVD, VCR, or video camera, but I've never used it. I use HDMI.

There wouldn't need to me a hard drive, because everything would come from the server. There would be a limited OS that would be read from flash memory. It would always sit in standby mode when the unit is turned off, but still plugged in. This is not something that I would ever want to pull the top off to put in more memory, and upgrade the video card, or install new software. My days of wanting to fool with computer hardware and software are long over. I want to be able to turn it on and use it quickly and easily. The OS would be small and just run a two applications that can be upgraded from the server. First there would be a web browser. The email client would be just your basic SMTP email client run through the browser. The email would be passed to a server side application that would assign user name and passwords based on admin settings (e.g. The Smith Family smithfam@sbcglobal.net) The other application would stream video and music from the server.

Maybe something like this already exists. If it doesn't, I'm staking my claim to the idea right now, and I'll sue the pants off anyone that markets this idea in the future and does not pay me royalties or give me stock options.

The server side will be like a small office server set up with a high speed router to stream video and music. Video and music could either be run from the hard drive or from a CD/DVD player. The TV/Web Computers in the rooms would basically have a robust guest account and would be logged on automatically. Other more traditional user accounts could be set up and managed like in a traditional networked office. Users would have private email and folders on the server that would be accessed from a real computer, but also be able to access video and music from their computers.

So far what I have is 2 coaxial cables and 2 CATV cables run to each room and they are all in a bundle hanging from a joist under the butler's pantry floor. As I said, this is just a start at think about what to do. I have a long ways to go, and something tells me the end product will not look like what I described above.