Music + Technology + Random Nonsense from the Music Industry, by Ethan Kaplan

We’re getting ourselves settled into the house right now, so I figured I’d give the geek-centric update on what’s been happening. I’ll refrain from oohing and aahing over our color pallette.

Home Automation: I’ve pretty much finished all the lights, save for the patio switches. The patio switches have the neutral wire running through their box (as they are not terminal points), so I have to splice into them to install the Insteon switches. Also I killed the downstairs patio switch when I bridged a switch-controlled outlet by the door. Oops. I have to fix that.

Insteon just released an interesting device, which is basically an I/O controller. Indigo doesn’t support use of this device yet, but when they do, I could see me using it from a central location to control the fireplace (which uses a momentary switch to turn it on and off) and the garage door (likewise). As it is now, I have a PowerFlash and a N/O magnetic switch to see if the garage door is open or not.

In other home automation news, the IR X-10 interface is very flaky, and while I have the Logitech Harmony 880 programmed to trigger a “lights dim” mode when watching the TV, it only works half the time.

Home Theater: We got DirecTV installed with a 5-LNB satellite on the roof of our place. Because of various constraints, we had to do the “non-invasive” installation, which is basically a frame that has six cinder-blocks supporting it. After searching high and low for the new DirecTV HD-DVR (HR20-700 model), I ended up having to resort to E-Bay to get it. After calling DirecTV to activate it, I asked to get an installation done for the second line from the dish to the box for the second tuner. The person I was talking to had no clue what I was talking about, and I had to do escalation to tech-support, who did know. He even knew that E-Bay was the only place to get the device.

The DVR is amazing. Much speedier than the Charter Cable DVR we used to have, and while not as nice as Tivo, it operates just the same, minus the audio cues. Interesting to note is that the box has a Network check on it. I put another Airport Extreme in the living room to extend our network, and hooked it to the DVR and the DVR successfully got on our network and talked to DirecTV, but said it had no purpose of doing so. I have to wonder what they have planned.

On the Airport note, we have three in the house. One primary, and two extenders, one of which is used as a print server.

Sonos: I finally got to hook the Sonos up, and one of the best things I’ve discovered (beyond how insanely cool it is) is the ability to control it from a web interface. I used to the Sonos Web Controller for this. I installed it and run it on the MacMini which the home automation system is installed on. The desire right now is to do something along the lines of this HomeSeer plugin, where I can use Sonos boxes as announcement systems for the Home Automation system.

I’m not sure how I’m going to do this, but I think it involves a lot of Perl, of which I don’t have the most experience with. I do know Perl, but don’t use it readily enough.

Here are a few things I want to do with the Sonos/Indigo interface:
- Use it as a whole-house announcement system, but make it smart to target rooms w/ recent activity
- Have it notify us 20 seconds after the garage door opens of any phone calls or packages left (use Phlink and motion detectors for this)
- Interface it with iCal to remind us of important things (like trash day, etc)
- Interface it with mail monitoring to announce new mail once an hour or so

So when done properly, Sonos can act as a multi-room audio controller. The only complication is that in the living room, its hooked through the receiver, so you have to switch inputs to have it broadcast out as normal. I do wonder if the Sonos simulcasts out of all outputs though, in which case I can also have two smaller speakers hooked up for announcements.

Spousal Approval Factor: We got a LampLinc controller to control our bedside lamps, and so I altered the “Sleep Mode” procedure to match. What happens now is that when you press Sleep Mode (control button 1 on the box behind our bed), the overhead lights dim to 40% and the bedside globe lamps turn on to 60%. Over the course of ten minutes, the overhead lights dim down do 0. At ten minutes then, the globe lamps start dimming down until they reach 0. By that time we’re usually zonked. Once the globe lamps are at 0%, Indigo goes through the house and shuts all the other lights off and changes the behavior of the motion detectors. At night, if motion is detected in the bedroom, the lights only go on to 20%, but the bathroom light and landing light go on. This has made Amy happy.