Adidas4275’s Dual Purpose Livingroom/Home Theater Build

[Adidas4275]

Okay guys my wife and I recently bought our first home and being the missingremote.com member that I am I needed to build my own home theater. Our home is a 1900 sqf 4 bed, 2 full bath with a 2 car garage. The living room, dining room and kitchen are all one open space, which is very applealing but really difficult for light control for a projector.

I did my “homework” for about 3 months and came up with my list of equipment, most of it had to be purchase since we came from a 600 sqf 1 bedroom appartment.

[B]Equipment List:[/B]

[B]Projector:[/B] Epson Home Cinema 720 from Visual Apex (free extra lamp from rebate)
[B]Projector Mount:[/B] Visual Apex Universal Projector Mount AV-818U
[B]Speakers:[/B] 5.1 (MIA is the sub, still needs to be purchased) All from “The Speaker Company” they had good reviews over at AVSfourm for the price.
Front L R and C are IW-D5 LCR pack $159
Rear 2 are IC-5 – Pair 5.25″ $39.99 pair
[B]AVR:[/B] Onkyo 605 bought for $200 off of AVS fourm

[B]HTPC:[/B]
[B]CPU:[/B] AMD X2 BE-2400 45w 2.3GHZ (Friday will be replaced with an X2 245)
[B]Motherboard:[/B] Foxconn A7GM-S
[B]RAM:[/B] 2GB DDR2 667 2 Sticks
[B]HDD:[/B] WD Black 640gb
[B]ODD:[/B] LG Blu-Ray reader
[B]PSU[/B]: Antec Smartpower
[B]GPU:[/B] ATI 4830 Silent (motherboard doesnt do 5.1/7.1 over HDMI)

[B]WHS:[/B]
[B]Case[/B]: Norco 4020
[B]CPU:[/B] Intel Celeron E1400
[B]Motherboard:[/B] Biostar G31-M7 TE (CPU and Motherboard were bought for $50 at a Frys)
[B]HDD:[/B] 6 750gb WD7500AAKS on Highpoint RR 2300 Raid 5 with 1 as hotspare
2 750gb WD7500AAKS on motherboard as OS and storage pool drive
Drives run at 47*C with ambient at 30*C
4TB of Useable Space with RAID5 and a hotspare
[B]PSU:[/B] Antec 650w Earthwatt
[B]STB:[/B] Motorola STB HD comcast box (soon to be tapped into for recording via either FireSTB, ATI Cable Card (with hack) or PVR-HD)
All speaker wiring is CL2 in-wall rated 12ga wiring from monoprice, it took 200ft for my install.
HDMI cables are also monoprice: 2 6 ft and 1 25ft

All components are in the closet of the next bedroom, I will either build my own rack or buy a MA rack, depending on the $$ flow soon…..

And I have a logitech 890 RF remote that will be here on friday ( i was looking at the 900, but $400 vs $150 for basically the same function)

Here are some Pics:

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My little sister who is around 5’1″ for reference

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Server, Modum, Router, TV and STB on Standby

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Everything on and at full load

Just made my DIY network rack, it will be “finished” later this week. its roughed out and I will add trim and paint and such….
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UPDATE 1/8/2010
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Okay so i started the long and expensive jouney into home automation. I recently purchased Home Seer Pro (they had a sale) and I got 2 ELO USB glass capacitive touchscreens to mount on/in the wall.

I found the touchscreens on ebay for $40 a piece (buy it now 8% CB) + shipping so I bought 2 (one is not being used and will be installed later)

I decided on homeseer for a couple reasons….. it is DIY/end user friendly, it has been around for a while, it has an active forum and community, many, many, many plugins and it is completely customizable…..

So i spent about 10 hrs creating some touchscreen with HStouch and linking them to WMP on my WHS which was a little bit of a pain to get installed and a weather screen. So far i have found HStouch and homeseer pro to be very useable and because of a good forum it is easy to find answers to easy problems.

I bought 5 homepro z-wave light switches that were suppost to be here yesterday but have not arrived 🙁 and will be controlled via the touch pannel.

I installed the pannel with normal 12-2 romex a new work box and a plug. I didnt get any pics of drywalling the inside, mainly because i suck at drywall and it looks bad 😀 but no one will ever see it as it is behind the screen. The screen is mounted in the wall and it sticks out about 3/4″ similar to a picture frame.

I have a CL2 monoprice 35′ VGA cable and a set of monoprice USB–> CATx extenders for the touchscreen

It is in the livingroom/dinningroom/kitchen open space and is next to the hallway leading to the master suite.

Okay here are some pics:
so i am switching to live drive for hosting and this is the 3rd time posting these….. dumb live drive and its web links that dont link to the photo and the preview (small res) photos you cannot link to either…. 😡

Once the lightswitches arrive I will finish the lighting control screen and have all the lights in that main room controlled via the touchscreen and 7MC state.

UPDATE 1/9/2011

1) Just installed in ceiling speakers (contractor grade) in 3 rooms of the house: extra bedroom (current home of Kinect), Wife’s Office, Living Room over the dining room table. Speakers are hooked up to an Elan Z-660 6 channel amp and each zone is controlled by a Logitech Squeezebox Receiver. Receivers are controlled via Duet Controller, iPhones, iPad and HomeSeer plugin.

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pics will be uploaded shortly… still learning how to link to my skydrive
you can see the 3 logitech squeezebox receivers and the 2 Elan amps.

the 2nd Elan amp will be used shortly for the Master Bedroom, My Office and either Back Yard or in the hallways.

I finally bought a real rack. it is a dell 42″ enclosure. I am currently buying shelves, rails, PDUs and other rack accessories. In a couple months I will take down the wooden homemade rack and install my dell rack with all the goodies. It will be sideways in the closet and the doors will go back on. (wife is excited 😀 )

More to come shortly.

Also I am going to start blogging this content and future projects over at missingremote.com

Future Upgrades:

Z-wave thermostat (DONE)
motion/temp sensors
z-wave light switches in each room
z-wave door lock
z-wave door/window sensors
install 2nd touchscreen in the hallway near the garage
ip webcam with motion detection for the front door (DONE)

Program homeseer to work how i want it 😀

[Adidas4275]

fixed some of my pic links.  I will be adding more stuff soon.

 

I just added a 1/2 house audio setup with squeezebox and I bought a Dell 42″ rack 😀

I should have some updates in short order

[Adidas4275]

Just wanted to let you guys know I am not dead :p

 

About a year ago I took my interest in technology and put it to use with remote controlled helicopters.

 

I built a multirotor helicopter with live first person view video that is able to carry a DSLR camera.

 

I built the rig from parts from all over the country and world in order to do some aerial photography and just have fun

 

here is my first ever “production level” video

 

 

 

 

I carry a Sony Nex-5n camera 

 

This was from a trip I took up to Alaska this summer!

 

Please let me know what you think!

here is an aerial highlight reel of only air shots!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cT2PPKQDr0E&list=UUqYcezsHLfxxnWL-eIt0j3Q&index=0&feature=plcp

 

The same skills needed to build a PC, overclock, solder make custom cases and fan bus’s are what helped me get into RC.

[Author]

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