Pete's R&D Build Thread

Today was a visit from my friendly electrician who helped me wire in a dimmer with 2 switches properly. Now I can switch on and off the lights from both switches! (It used to just be 1 switch).
Discovered I was wiring the Fibaro dimmer at the wrong end of the 2 switches, and needed to be at the 'master' end.

Also had a double socket installed in my coat cupboard so I can relocate lots of my messy cabling out of the way !

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Aided by the purchase of a couple of switches.
I went for a 16 port gigabit PoE switch (ready for PoE cameras) with plenty of space for other things if I want to wire anything else in. Plus a gigabit 5-port switch for in my tv cabinet for Xbox / TV / Mac Mini / Onkyo etc

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*drools*. I really need to get a PoE switch, at the moment all my equipment is run using adapters. Not very efficient or tidy!

It'll only help if they're 24v though! I really need to get my tech stuff tidied up, i want to stick a 9u cab on the wall but I do wonder how that would affect z-wave communication!


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[quote="Chockymonster"]It'll only help if they're 24v though! I really need to get my tech stuff tidied up, i want to stick a 9u cab on the wall but I do wonder how that would affect z-wave communication!

48v for 802.3af/at actually . And yes they are, all the adapters are at the rack end, it's just horribly messy. But then everything in that rack is.. All sorts of bodges and what not.

As for z-wave range I have no issues from within my rack.

48v for 802.3af/at actually . And yes they are, all the adapters are at the rack end, it's just horribly messy. But then everything in that rack is.. All sorts of bodges and what not.

As for z-wave range I have no issues from within my rack.

I know that! Been playing around win some Unifi stuff that uses 24v POE injectors, it took me ages to figure out why they wouldn't power up from my meraki switch!

As for a mess, I'll leave this here.

Oooh fancy! Mine:

It's since been moved into the loft, and is much more chocka with stuff that doesn't need to be there.


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I know that! Been playing around win some Unifi stuff that uses 24v POE injectors, it took me ages to figure out why they wouldn't power up from my meraki switch!

Yeah, that was totally annoying to find out... why they wouldn't make it follow an established standard, I don't know. There are some 24v PoE switches and injectors out there aside from the Unifi, but I just went with the standard UniFi ones since I only needed 2 or maybe 3 down the line. I still want to write a plugin to pull some data from the controller as it collects quite a bit of interesting tidbits.

Here is my rack - the Z-Wave adapter is actually only about level with the top of the ladder leaning on the wall, but stuck to the wall (that you can't see) beside the rack. Range isn't fantastic but gets well enough to the next wired module(s) to move on... and it hits wireless modules about 40' away in attic and crawlspace.



Adam

Rack.... Space to even put Rack...


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Holy moly! That's impressive, what on earth is all that stuff for?

There is a very inexpensive option (if you don't count the stuff that goes in it) called a "Lack Rack". It's based on an Ikea end table. Here's an older picture of mine (I've added a couple things since then.) All power supplies and shelves are off eBay or Monoprice. The punch panel is from Monoprice. The downside is that there's limited times you can move things around. The upside is you can just replace the Lack!

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Holy moly! That's impressive, what on earth is all that stuff for?

Well, when we built a couple of years ago I ran ALL of the cabling and intelligence to the closet/rack in the office... and there was a LOT that I ran, in the multiple thousands of feet of cabling. Wife thought I was crazy, but what's new right?

Much of this is networking equipment - I work from a home office, so the equipment is somewhat doubled as I wanted to keep my work connection (which is a hardware VPN tunnel to the main office) separated from my home. No use in letting the network guys at work watch my Plex, am I right?

So, more-or-less top to bottom is:

• UPS bank (don't see it in the picture, it is on top of the rack... set of 5 UPS towers as it was cheaper than 2 big ones
• Shelf for cable modem and "external" switch
• Home networking - router / switch / patch panel
• Work networking - patch panel / switch / router
• Phone and video distribution (via Cat6) patch panels
• PoE injector
• HDMI-over-Cat6 modules (x2)
• HDMI selectors x2 (these select which signal goes to over the two distribution lines above)
• Video sources to be distributed - TiVo, Bluray, Roku, Chromecast, etc.
• Security DVR
• Audio distribution - amps and zone receivers
• Shelf for MacMini, hard drives, etc.
• Dell PowerEdge Servers scavenged from work... older but run Plex and network sniffer and monitors just fine!

Just ended up being able to put all things in one place, basically. The wires are a little messier than normal, at least on the side there, as I was doing some work on some things. The front patch panels won't ever look much cleaner than that due to the number of wires. Basically, every outlet near TV or office area or what not got Phone/IR cable, 2x Video Distributions cables, Coax Cable, Home Network & Work Network plugs. This is in a single gang box so isn't messy on wall, but all those cables come in to one spot so create quite a bundle. Overkill, I know, but I can hook up virtually anything in any room and the wife LOVES the distribution of video so that you can pause TiVo, walk to the other room and pick it up.

Adam

Very cool.


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My cousin did that when he built 5 years ago; not as big, but data/coax/audio to every room, back to a point in the eaves off the master bedroom.


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Pete, do you have any pictures of the motion sensors in situ? The photos on vesternet's site make it look like a glowing monstrous eye. I need a couple of motion sensors to fill a hole seeing that the aeon labs one isn't supported!


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Living room one that has the led disabled