DIY Smart home thread

wow that is nice i want to do something like this to my house. keep up the good work.

well to revive this thread a bit, I am slowly getting the bits together to do the various parts I want.

Picked up a Evo D51e for free on Friday, it isnt bleeding edge or even last gen but it should work great for the security side of things.

P4 1.9
2gb DDR 2100
80gb PATA
DVD-Rom/CD-R
6 USB 1.1 AFAIK ports
in a SFF case.

It may well end up being the front end for the security side. I have 2 webcams on order from the last Woot-off and one here now so I should be able to cover pretty much every room in the condo with only a few minor tweaks.

Going to put together an older x2 rig for media probably. A64 3800x2 at 2550, 2gb DDR400, HDD are still undecided, Razer soundcard, 7600gt, loaded down in a stacker, undecided PSU.

Home automation side is pretty barren, I havent really looked at it at all since I posted this thread TBH, but I still have ideas I want to get done.

One plan I have is to mount a KB and 15" LCD by the front door to be able to post up weather, shopping lists, To do Lists etc. What I will have to look at with this is can I fish a VGA cable that far, and will my wireless KB make it to there as well. Though I just had an alternative idea using the little D51e and a USB wireless.

Work has pretty much overpowered my ability to do almost anything here at home as of late (2 jobs 6 days a week) so my tinkering has been pushed almost OFF the table.

Concerning your dislike of wireless. Just some stats to think of.

Running a relatively high powered pc, you can crack a WPI with packet sniffing/monitoring given about 2-3 days.

Change your WPI encryption every day, and have all of your machines dongled to the same set of passcode-switches, and you have a network far more secure than anyone really would be able to crack more conveniently than splicing a wire.

Other than that, fsking awesome idea. Wishing I was out of college and had my own house so I could do something similar.

to crack my wired you have to get into my condo and onto my network.

Wireless you just have to be in range.

you could do the same thing in college.

Just dont drill holes etc..

Ok after doing a bit of research it looks like I may be going with a test run of LinuxMCE for the webcam side at least. Basing off reading info and a few vids it appears that LinuxMCE will control lighting (Zwave) and webcams via the OSD.

I will be downloading it to test this feature out.

Time to look into Zwave as well, also looking into seeing if my Harmony will work with Zwave.

DAGNABIT I KNEW I should have gotten the 890 instead..

grrr..

The 550 does not work with Zwave it seems, time for more research.

Forgot to mention this earlier

One easy way to extend the range of view for the webcam/security cam is to simply add a remote control pan option to any webcam or security camera.

I got my remote camera panner from Compgeeks, but they are sold out. So I found you two other choices if you decide they would be a good fit for you.

This is the one I have

X10 makes one as well, but its a bit bulky on the remote side

Thanks Cody, though it appears that with no other posts you may be shilling for them.

still trying to figure out a few backend things prior to getting this moving (yes I know, 6 months later and still no movement).

I figured out I need to decide on the backend HW first (evo d51e is a debate just becasue of size). Once, I figure out the HW, I will get moving on what I want to do in reality vs what I just want to do.

Thanks James but this is DIY not prebuilt.

I know I will probably have to incorporate SOME prebuilt into the mix but I would prefer to minimize it as much as possible.

Though it does appear that I may have to move more towards XP with addons rather then Linux. I would prefer to avoid MS if at all possible but Im not sure that I will be able to, unless I decide to write my own drivers and OS. Neither of which I honestly know how to do.

*edit*

TWENTY TWO GRAND???

It better come with a personal bodyguard for that cost.

http://ikeahacker.blogspot.com/2008/01/server-farm-right-in-your-living-room.html

well looking to use this instead of the current smoothwall in the entertainment center and to also migrate over a few other rigs as well.

Ill just need a second 15" LCD as the other one is the bedroom monitor.

Lets see here:

5 port KVM
Fileserver (in process running Unraid eventually)
Smoothwall
the P3 500 for network monitoring
and possibly another rig for VM server

Need to get a Gigabit switch still...
Ill need a new AP instead of using the current Linksys which annoys me
Rackmount KVM with KB control so less button mashing

Damn this plan...

Im still trying to work on the Webcam security aspect but so far out of all of the SW I have tried, none have impressed me much, I may end up getting the X10 SW and using it as it seems to be the best of what I have tried overall (old job used X10 for security).

Nice to see that this project is still alive

Adragontattoo said:

Ill just need a second 15" LCD as the other one is the bedroom monitor.

Click to expand...

On my to do list is to disassemble my Kawasaki DVD player and salvage the 9" screen to use it as an extra security monitor. Keep procrastinating though as it probably will be a headache, but I'll get around to it eventually

Well instead of saving some money but waiting for an unknown period of time, I raided Home depot for some parts.

I need to head back over to get another 6 port plate, a few phone jacks, a couple cable jacks, cable crimps and a feeder rod so I can redo the CATV line but the project is under way. I am probably going to drive down to Ikea tomorrow to look around, and pick up a few things for the project.

House is starting to come together but I am also in the middle of redoing a bunch of stuff that may result in a redo of a bunch of stuff.

(pulling down 2 tanks, getting rid of 4)

I have alot of faceplates, ports (cat5/3/catv) cat5, special Y connectors, adapters etc. Left over form my smartHome project when we bought our home. We built it so before they insulated I went crazy. Anyway I have alot of that stuff left over. If you do not mind waiting 2 days to get it I can send some down to you. Just let me know what you need. HD is expensive for that stuff. Most of it can be shipped first class for cheap.

Do not be afraid to use cat5 for the phone runs and then use cat5 jacks. Wire it up to the phone block and not the switch. Later on you can convert it if needed to data.

Got any pics of the place?

The place is tiny. Literally I will be running a 6" line between the two plates. I am currently only wiring up the main room and the bedroom.

My condo overall is 840sf so regardless it isnt huge by any means.

Well after thinking a bit more I have come up with another item I want to add in to the current setup.

I am building a fileserver for the condo, which will probably end up running Samba/shares for the various systems in my Condo.

Plan/Current setup so far is as follows.

1 XP rig (gaming and work)
1 Kubuntu rig (migrating to using it more often then the XP rig)
1 SFF Compaq desktop (the bedroom PC/guest PC)
1 Laptop for bumming on the couch (needs new HDD and new Touchpad)
1 p3500 laptop for kitchen use and various other uses
1 Smoothwall rig that will be getting rebuilt within the next two weeks (2u case, cant remember current config).
1 Additional 1u server that is coming in today (p3 800, needs new HDD, 1gb PC133 ECC), undecided fate at the moment, may well handle web control duties.

I am looking at trying to offload some of the ad blocking duties to a seperate machine in order to minimize the delay in opening FF, at the moment my blocklist is large enough that I am sitting at about a 20 second delay after clicking open.

I also want to look into an ACL for my network beyond a simple WEP key, I am probably just going to run an ACL for my network and only allow the MAC addresses for the machines I have at the moment.

It isnt perfect but i figure between only allowing 8 total IP's, the MAC filter, and a WEP key that should limit any potential intrusions by anyone who isnt determined.

I am looking at trying to offload some of the ad blocking duties to a seperate machine in order to minimize the delay in opening FF, at the moment my blocklist is large enough that I am sitting at about a 20 second delay after clicking open.

Click to expand...

SmoothWall can Handle that too, with Adzap Mod installed, can be found here http://community.smoothwall.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=26346

Put your Wifi on a Purple network,

Jolly-Swagman said:

SmoothWall can Handle that too, with Adzap Mod installed, can be found here http://community.smoothwall.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=26346

Put your Wifi on a Purple network,

Click to expand...

I figured it could but wasnt sure what addon would do that and was too lazy to actually look..

Works for me!

Thanks.

Now to go back to checking out the new server

I realize this is 2.5 years old, but I'm curious as to what ended up happening. Plus it'd go really well in the overclocked homes forum section now

x2