Getting Started With Insteon and Home Automation

I already loved the htguys and their excellent HDTV and Home Theater Podcast, but it recently only got better when they finally got the Insteon and home automation bug. It reminded me that I have not shared any starter tips or blogged my current setup for quite some time.

I got into Insteon seriously back in 2006. Since then I have slowly added more and more devices and now have most of my home automated:

7 x KeypadLincs (8 button)
10 x SwitchLincs (Relays for the Fans and Dimmers for the lights)
8 x LampLincs

4 x ApplianceLincs
1 x Venstar T1800 Thermostat plus Insteon Thermostat Adapter and Humidity Sensor
1 x PowerLinc Controller USB
2 x Access Points

1 x Garage door sensor

1 x USB IR emitter for Home Theater control

When I started I was a windows guy and so used a PC as my main controller running PowerHome (http://www.myx10.com/). The software is great, great community support and very stable. Since then I have gone all Apple and will probably eventually switch to Indigo.

You don't need a computer for Insteon to work. You can link switches and modules, even your thermostat, to each other and all works great. The big value of a computer software based controller is that it records all the links you make and allows you to make links and write them to the devices. This is a huge timesaver especially when a device fails or needs resetting. You can simply rewrite it from the computer. If you don't want a computer on all the time then you can just buy the PLC controller and download some things such as timers to it directly and it will run them when the computer is off.

At one point I added a 7" touch screen controller which I documented here.

Unfortunately the screen broke and so I was forced to rethink. About the same time the iPhone and iPod Touch came out and made portable touch screens cheap. I decided to move to the iPhone for my music remote control and started to try and retarget my home automation to it too.

To do this on a pc or mac can be a lot of work involving screen design, etc.

Then just last week I bought the 2412N Controller module and its simplicity blew me away. It is not as flexible as a pc but it instantly gave me access to all my lights and thermostat from my iPhone or any browser and from anywhere in the world. Huge spouse approval factor. We can turn up the AC on the way home and it is cool by the time we get there. Go this route and you don't even need a computer.

Here are a few tips on things that I found out as I went along:

(1) Insteon communication is incredibly reliable. Unlike X-10 you get close to 100% response rate. However its big enemies are UPSs, Computers and Receivers. They suck the signal out the line and reduce the effectiveness, in some cases killing it completely. The result is a dead zone within your house. The solution is simple. You can buy filters, similar to the Insteon modules, called FilterLincs, that you plug between the offending devices and the power socket. As they go up to 10 amps you can put a bunch of devices on a single filter. If you are worried about blowing it you can use a Kill-a-watt to measure the current drawn by your devices or UPS when on.

(2) Smarthome does regular specials and sales. Often worth waiting for these. I have also gotten a few things via their auction site at a good discount.

(3) If you want to get serious with a computer software controller then you will need a spare insteon device to use as a trigger device (Indigo may work without this). Keypad buttons have to be linked to something to generate a trigger. You can then listen for these events on the computer and act on them. For instance I have a button that tells the computer the house is vacant. A cheap Lamplinc is great and you can use it for all your keypad triggers.

(4) You will keep finding new things to control. Powered speakers are great for control from a keypad. Holiday lights too. My favorite, my PC pings a couple of websites every 30 minutes such as google and if it cannot get a response it reboots the router. I also have a button that lights up every tuesday to remind me to take out the trash. I also have halogen closet lights that I don't want to be left on by accident. When they are turned on the computer sets up a turn off command for 10 minutes later.

(5) The Keypads used to come with clear buttons that you could print out custom labels for. They replaced these with solid white ones which cannot be customized. They want you to buy custom etched ones but until your system is stable you won't know what they should say and if you leave them as A,B,C etc your family will hate you. However you can still order the clear button kit for just under $6. I also use the color change kit to make them all soft blue and the red ones are perfect for alert buttons such as Garage Door Open or Take Out The Garbage.

(6) By default your switches and lamplincs will just turn the lights on and off. Change the ramp rate and you will get a nice gradual dim up and down. Surprising what a difference this makes and people really notice. Plus you can easily override when needed by double tapping the switch.

If you are just starting out then I recommend getting one of the Insteon starter kits initially. Many of them come with the RemoteLinc remote control but personally I don't use mine, find it a little ugly and it eats batteries even when it is not used. An iPhone or universal remote make a much better control.

My only warning? Once you start you won't be able to stop and this could prove to be an expensive hobby........

Dummies Guide To Whole House Audio On A Budget

Yesterday I came home to a small package I had ordered off eBay and smiled with the satisfaction of knowing I had finally finished my whole house audio project. More on that final piece later.

In my last blog on home theater I explained how you could get a high end Kaleidescape like experience for a fraction of the cost. This time I am going to focus on whole house audio. If you are an audiophile stop reading now. What I am going to explain is a budget conscious setup with a few restrictions. That said I think the audio quality if more than adequate for every day listening. If you are interested in getting music in every room in your house without spending your kids inheritance on a Sonos system then read on.

Let me first cover the capabilities of the system and what is missing compared to a high end system.

• You will need some form of amped or powered speakers in each room you want music in. You may already have this and just not realize. I found a already had a Hi-Fi, TV, iPod dock or radio in every room I wanted to cover except the kitchen.
• You will need to be able to run cable through your house. I tried every wireless solution there is from whole house FM transmitters to the cool and simple Apple Airport Express. For me it had to be wired. Any dropouts, even infrequent or very short destroy the experience.
• This is not a multi-zone system. The same audio goes to every room. This is a big limitation but also results in a simpler and cheaper setup. My kids will just have to like whatever I listen to.

The entire system feeds from a single point. In my family room I have a simple audio/video switch . Audio only switches are hard to find and I already had one of these from my pre-hdmi TV setup. If you have a universal remote I would look for an IR controllable one. Into that switch I feed all my sources:

1. Mac Mini music server
2. Turntable
3. Cable (for cable radio stations)
4. CD Player

I also have an iPod dock that I can switch out when friends are round so they can feed their music into the system.

The Music Server:

My main music source is a mac mini. It has by entire music collection on it. Some things to bear in mind when choosing a computer based music server:

Dedicated is Better:

• I do not use the same mini that is at the heart of my home theater system and running plex. PC and Macs do support multiple sound cards but I wanted to keep things simple for a number of reasons. My home theater mini is new, fast and dedicated to watching video, outputting digital audio to my receiver. My whole house audio mini is the original mini and is set to output analog and run independently of the other system. One big advantage over an apple express or other multi-client system is that ALL audio from the mac mini is sent to every room. No need for Airfoil.

Go Headless:

• I can use the iTunes Remote on my iPhone to control the mini and use screen sharing from another mac for maintenance. I also use Mocha VNC Lite for the iPhone to start internet radio and other audio that cannot be integrated into iTunes. This means this is truly a server. It does not have a display, a keyboard or even a mouse. The BBC Bigscreen iPlayer is especially suited to control via VNC on your iPhone.

Keeping Everything In Sync:

• iTunes just announced a synching feature in 9 that I have not had a chance to look at. Currently I use the excellent Syncopation which allows me to keep all of my iTunes libraries across several macs in sync. I tried various setups but eventually settled on a single master which every other system syncs to. The mini is actually a client and not a master, mainly because I purchase all my music on my laptop or phone and so it makes sense for it to be the master library. Every time I connect my laptop to my home network the music, playlists, podcasts and videos all sync instantly to all my other systems. Wonderful piece of software.

From One Room To Whole House

So how do you feed every room. This bit might shock you but it actually works. I simply run line level audio to

every room. I don't even run it in a hub and spoke model but instead simply have a single run snaking from room to room and splitting off at each point I want audio. No additional amplification of the signal is done.

My first stop is the family room itself. It feeds my receiver which in turn powers my deck as a second zone. Next stop is an iPod dock in my office, then a cd/radio in my dining room. Penultimate stop is a Pyle amp that powers my kitchen in-ceiling speakers and then one long final stretch to the bedroom TV. The total cable length is probably in the range of 100 to 150ft and yet the quality at the end of the line in the bedroom is superb.

Planning and Purchasing

To keep your costs down you need to plan your system and measure your runs carefully, allow some slack and then order you cables from Monoprice. Their prices cannot be beat especially for long runs. I basically split at each room drop using a simple splitter. Make sure you get your male and female connections right, generally good advice, and buy some connectors if needed.

Troubleshooting

Because I didn't plan ahead and extended the system slowly, I often ended up with cable being the wrong gender or too short. As I said before, allow extra length and but extra gender reverses/connectors to be safe.

This brings me back to that final package from ebay. The only real issues I hit was when I added cable radio as an input and my bedroom TV as an output. I instantly created an unwanted cable Ground Loop hum. I ended up fixing this with a cable ground loop isolator from Jensen. Not a cheap solution but it did the job perfectly.

I didn't cost the whole system and your cost will really depend on what powered audio systems you have in place already. And this whole thing is really on made possible with the iTunes remote for the iPod Touch and iPhone.

That said the result is very robust, zero dropouts and you will find yourself listening to more music than ever before.

Bonus Points

If you have a Chumby then you can install this very cool widget chumbiTunes which will allow you to see what is playing in iTunes and change the volume, pause, forward and rewind.

MacWorld reviews Plex

http://www.macworld.com/article/132438/2009/06/plex.html?lsrc=rss_main

Lots of new Plex Plugins Available

Huge slew of new plugins in the last few weeks for Plex. Some great stuff here including Picassa, BBC Podcasts, MSNBC, Food Network, HGTV, Shoutcast, CNN, Boing Boing and many more.

Check them out over at the Plex site

Dummies Guide To Setting Up A Mac mini Home Theater

Having just recently setup a mac mini based home theater I noticed there was no good single guide with the simple basic steps. I was transitioning from Meedio based HTPC and so had some prerequisites such as the ability to play DVD iso images.

For the Mac mini I chose Plex for the media manager and frontend as I prefer the asthetics over boxee. It has a very slick interface, something seriously missing from frontrow and even Apple TV.

Hardware:

From monoprice order:

- 1557 Toslink to Mini M/M OD:5.0mm, Molded Type - 6ft ($2.23)

- 5311 Mini Display Port to HDMI Adapter ($14.25)

From Apple:

- Apple IR Remote (you may have this already)

- Buy the new Mac mini and upgrade the memory yourself. Not as hard as everyone says.

- Get the mini Apple wireless keyboard and a mouse, or just use screen sharing from another Mac (works great).

Storage:

- If you have

a lot of media you will need enough storage for the media plus backups.

- Drobois expensive but simple.

Setup:

- To stop the apple remote controlling your other macs you will need to either pair the remote or disable IR on the other macs: System Preferences -> Security

Software:

* Perian (codec and video support)

http://perian.org/

* SIlverlight (required for Netflix)

http://silverlight.net/themes/silverlight/common/home.aspx?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1

or just install Netflix from the website by starting a watch it now movie.

* Plex (media center software)

http://www.plexapp.com/

- Setup Display:

• You can do this at the OS level but it is tricky and for me I just could not get working with my Onkyo receiver. If you want to try then follow this guide
• Otherwise you can do just for Plex which works fine for me: Preferences -> System -> Display Calibration

- Setup Remote:

- Set remote mode to Always Running so remote starts Plex and not Front Row: Preferences -> System -> Input Devices

- Add Weather App:

- Preferences -> Skin -> Home

- Add applications from Plex App Store:

-Hulu, YouTube, Netflix, Vimeo, etc.

- Add your content

- Movies:

- I use iso images for all my movies. Simple, full quality, easy to write to

DVD for the car and a single file.

- Put movies in their own folders and make sure the folder name and

movie name match.

- Name all

your movies: moviename (YEAR).extension

- You don't have to provide coverart as Plex will go looking for it. If you

are worried about quality then grab your own.

- Tip for adding coverart: Rename in Get Info and not in Finder window

as the extension must be .tbn and match movie name exactly

For example:

Batman Begins (2005)

|-Batman Begins (2005).iso

|-Batman Begins (2005).tbn

- TV Shows:

- One show per folder, folder names matter, make names match tvdb

- If your show does not exist on tvdb then it will not be added to the

library view. Simple fix is to add the show to tvdb yourself

- Rescanning will not pick up changes on tvdb to previously added

programs. You can remove a single show by selecting it in the library

and holding the menu button. Then just rescan for new content.

From this menu you can also change the artwork if there are multiple

choices.

- You will notice in library view that not all episodes have thumbnails.

These do not need to be pulled from tvdb and can be auto generated

by Plex. The trick is you need to view the show in file mode to force this.

(If anyone knows a better way let me know)

- Music:

- iTunes is automagically picked up as a source and works great.

- Change to Now Playing Visualization (won't induce an epeleptic fit or

require you to be on drugs to enjoy)

- Change to Cover Art view for albums to emulate iTunes look and feel

- You can add a new source to be imported. I added 24/96 Flac encodes

and they worked perfectly first time and sound incredible too. Put the

cover art in the same folder, name it cover.jpg and it will get picked up.

You can get some samples here:

http://www.archive.org/audio/

http://www.hdtracks.com/

- Subtitles:

- Disable from the audio icon while playing a video (non-intuitive)

- RSS Feed:

- Add your favorite feeds to the scrolling ticker by editing this file and following these guidelines:

~/Library/Application Support/Plex/userdata/RssFeeds.xml

I've seen the future of the internet and it is...........

Video. Thats right. Good old fashioned video. Bear with me and I will explain.

First a question. You want to know how to make a souffle. So you google it. Which link do you click on, the pdf recipe on the food network site or the one for youtube? Or you want to know more about something you just got diagnosed with at the doctors. Do you follow the Mayo Clinic link or the youtube video of the doctor talking about it?

If you are my age or older you probably chose the former option in both cases. If you are under 20 then the likelihood is you chose the video. 

Video is the closest approximation to how we communicate the best. Face to face. Written word really only exists to communicate when we are not together or to capture something for posterity.

Kids get that. They would rather watch the movie than read the book in most cases. For some reason many adults think this is bad. They think the written word is a more noble and intellectual form of communication. This is pure snobbery. 

It is not the communication tool that matters but the content. Good content on video is better than garbage in a book, or for that matter on a web page.

I am generalizing of course. But you get the point. Or do you?

Ok, lets try a different problem. The classic debate of interactive TV. TV is a sit back experience but the internet is a lean forward one. It is why interactive TV has failed to take off yet seems so compelling on paper. A family cannot interact all at once for example, with a single TV.

But video is a sit back experience. 

Following RSS feeds in a reader is analogous to reading a newspaper. It has its place, no question. But why can you not consume that same information in a more sit back sort of way?

The solution? Well that is a whole other post for another day.........

Fraunhofer IIS Brings Surround Music to the iPod Community at CES

Fraunhofer IIS Brings Surround Music to the iPod Community at CES: Financial News - Yahoo!
Finance: "Fraunhofer IIS Brings Surround Music to the iPod Community at CES"

I would love to see multichannel music finally take off but I won't hold my breath. The car is actually the one place that might finally make this become a reality and not the living room as many have historically believed.