Our new house is nearly done getting painted and you can see the results on Flickr. I’m very happy with the colors thus-far and I can’t wait to get the flooring done. I’ve been living out of my parents house for the past few weeks (which is not so conveniently an hour south of work), so to get into the house on my own bed with my desk, computers, etc will be most welcome.
So I decided to rip out the existing intercom system and not use it. It wasn’t working in the first place (it had burnt out vacuum tubes!) and it was a cosmetic nightmare. The sposal approval factor was way low. Anyhow, the thing I wanted to use the intercom system for was whole-house audio to broadcast messages from Indigo (home automation software) like “the garage door is open fucknut!”
The place is small and narrow, so I’m thinking that a carefully placed speaker midway up the stairwell would suffice in terms of broadcasting out to the rest of the house. The O’Reilly Smarthomes Hacks book suggests using the unused pair from your phone system as a cheap in-house speaker system. I’m surmising there are other systems for doing this as well? Wireless?
Does anyone have any good suggestions for doing a “notifier” system in a house cheaply, easily and without structural modifications?
Comments Off
I am blogging from my blackberry because the only computer we have (a 12 inch powerbook) is with Amy. The G5, my friend for so long, is now setup at work outside my office. My office is likewise filled with all of my consumer electronics. That division of work and home? Not so much.
We are finalizing the reno contract right now. I am making sure to put everything discussed in.
And we move all our possesions into the storage room next weekend, and ourselves in the weekend after.
Ok, blogging from a blackberry is hard work. I miss the G5 
I’m searching for good software to manage a remodel/renovation. Something that’ll let me track by room the tasks to be done, and the stages of finishing. As well, something to track purchases that need to be made.
I’m supposing that I need to make this in Excel or Filemaker or something, but is there anything out there on the Mac for tracking this type of stuff?
We have closed, we have keys and now the fun starts. What we’re doing right now is getting bids from contractors and subcontractors for the renovation, as well as shopping for flooring, paint and accessories. Thankfully, Amy is a freelancer and thus can help out while I’m at work. Double thankfully, my office is less than a mile away from the house, so I can do quick trips over to meet with contractors.
Today I also wrote out a “What needs to be done” document that outlines overall things (like removing paneling, acoustic ceiling, etc) as well as room by room things that need to be done. The contractor that we met with today thought this was fantastic, and used it to jot things down as we did a walkthrough. I highly recommend this practice, as it also helps contain the stress.
As we’re still in preliminary work mode, I’m also researching some infrastructure things.
Dish, Cable or DirectTV?
For our TV, I’m trying to decide between Comcast cable, DirectTV or Dish. All services, I’d use their HD-DVR. From what I can tell, Dish is the furthest ahead in terms of HD options, and MPEG4 support. DirectTV has delayed their new MPEG4 capable DVR for a long long time, and I know that from experience, the DirectTIVO-HDDVR kind of sucks. Does anyone have any comments on the Dish box and service? I noticed their website mocks the infamous Comcast-tech-on-couch story, which I like.
Speakeasy, SBC or Cable?
I’ve been a Speakeasy DSL customer for a long while, at least four years now. Right now we have their 6.0 down / 768 up “naked” DSL service (no local phone service), which is great and reliable. They are usually pretty good when moving, minimizing downtime, etc. Stick with them? I think so.
Vonage, SBC or ?
Right now we use Vonage, and I’ve been a Vonage customer since 2002. However, with all the negative press they’ve received, I’m wondering if they are still the “defacto” VOIP service or if there is another provider that might work better. Any ideas?