Home Automation help

[AdrianA1]

Hi to all
I am in the process of building a new 3 bedroomed detached house in Gloucestershire and want to try and impliment a reliable home automation system in it to control as much as i can, I am having to wire from scratch so installation will be simple, but need to decide on what system to go for-
Ideally I would like it to be controlled via stratigically placed inteligent control panels with some integration with a server to allow things like blue tooth control from my I phone or remote control say whilst on holiday- I am prepared to spend a bit of time effort and money to get this right, as once its istalled there is no going back
Any help would be warmly recived and i would be happy to share experiences with like minded people on the site to try and iron out bugs in systems
Adrian

[RipMaster]

Macintosh Home Automation and Control Server

[DaveChester]

Hi

In reality most manufacturers will allow you to control your home from either a mobile phone or via the internet. You would be best having a chat with someone to work out your options - how many rooms of audio distribution do you want, how many of HD video, what else electrical do you want to control i.e. lighting, gates, sprinklers, blinds, heating etc etc

If you spend a lot of time away from home then incorporating intruder alarms and CCTV might provide great peace of mind.

The sky is the limit with these things!

There are a number of manufacturers you could look at Crestron, AMX, Control4 etc. Different ones will do different things for different budgets with differing amounts of style and functionality.

[hornydragon]

There are lots of options from home brew server software through to pro systems the thing you really need to get right at this stage is the infrastructure. What systems are you interested? Intelligent Lighting and heating? CCTV? TV and video distribution? Audio distribution? How much do you want to control from outside the property?

[Twisted Pear]

Hi there,

You need to consult a professional to ensure that you integrate the right type and amount of cabling around the property.

To do this is quite cheap and you can then decide what to hang on the end of the cables at a later date.

Most control, audio and video can be conducted down cat5e, Coax and speaker cable. I have been recently introducing Fibre optic networks into properties as it is nowhere near as expensive as it used to be. High def can be transmitted long distance without problems using fibre.

I used to work as a project manager for a large custom install company in London and set-up on my own at the beginning of this year. I generally install Control4 wherever possible as it is solid and cheap to implement. I currently have several Control4 projects installed and in development.

I am in the process of setting up my website and setting up on AV forums as an assured advertiser. In the meantime please post any questions that you may have and I will help wherever i can.

Karl Melkerts.

[AdrianA1]

Hi Karl
Thanks for the good advice, my property is at first floor joists at the moment so i have lots of time to decide on what I want
As I may have already said- I want to be able to control some things whilst away from the house via a router/internet, and also be able to automate a some of the heating/ventillation in order to make the house more economoicle to run.
I want to use cat5 whereever possibel and it was my intention to look at some systems including control 4 as it seems to be good value and reliable
Thanks again for you comments any thing else i can think of I may get back to you
Good luck with your new venture- where are you based??
Adrian

[DaveChester]

Hi Adrian

Feel free to take a look at our website. We have some case studies which might be of interest.

We operate nationally so location would not be a problem.

Any questions or anything just drop me a line or contact via the website.