Well, I decided a long time ago that it would be neat to put a big solar voltaic system at my new place and try to generate 100% of the electricity needed for the house (and servers and everything else I use since I work from home).
So I ended up going with a system that […]

Looks like Gefen just expanded their fiber optic line of cables (all fiber optic components are built right into the cable) to also include HDMI cabling (they had them for DVI before), which means I don’t need the external HDMI extender units (7 of them from this post).
http://www.gefen.com/kvm/cables/fiberextreme.jsp#hdmiextreme

Now if they would just come out with […]

Okay, I finally sat down tonight and figured out what I *think* I need (at least it’s a start so the experts have something to start with) to do centrally distributed audio/video for the house.
Audio
So I’m thinking every room (minus bathrooms, except for master) should be an audio “zone” as well as the pool house […]

Okay, I need to start making a list of things I want to be able to control from the home automation system for my house… So I’m just going to use this blog entry for that. If anyone can think of anything I’ve forgotten, please leave it as a comment and I’ll update this […]

Alek has setup his halloween lights this year so you can view them with a webcam. Even more fun is that fact that you can control them in realtime too.
Personally, I like raising Frankenstein from the dead, only to kill him off. hehe

So I’m thinking about getting a system for my new house where you can get an implant and doors will unlock for you automatically. But I also thought it would be cool if you could use those to track where someone (or a pet) was in the house in real time. Well I […]

So after my last post, I was poking around the Internet regarding RFID access control systems for buildings (for a house in my case), and I found a company called VeriChip. They offer systems that are wearable (what I originally was looking for), but also implantable inside your body, which seems pretty cool to […]

The US Department of Homeland security is going to start requiring foreigners to carry a “card” with them at all times. It will be an RFID type of card that can be read from 20 feet away.
Anyway… I don’t care a whole lot about that and the whole privacy concerns (I’ll let the privacy […]

Okay, I think I have it down to two companies for the home automation stuff…
AMX, which seems to be more widely deployed (the installers I met with last week have an office here in San Diego). It’s really impressive stuff (although for the price, anything is going to be impressive).
The other company is a […]