Jonathan's Toys

Automation

To manage such a complex system, it is helpful to have solutions that allow coordinated setting of all this gear. Therefore I have a Home Control PC. This is a dedicated PC that runs a home automation control program and has the necessary hardware interfaces to control Audio/Video, lights and power systems. My HCPC runs the best HC program out there: CeBotics HouseBot.

Using HouseBot and either my Viewsonic VP110 10" touchscreen or a Dell Axim PDA device with WiFi, I can see in real time the status of the power system, the lights and the Meridian 568. It is the later trick that really is hot. I can see the 'front panel' display of the 568 and control all its advanced parameters from the CE device. Very, very cool!

The HCPC also has full control of the power subsystem, so it manages the sequencing of power up and down via relay controls. Actually, cascaded relay controls, as the ADI relays in turn control much larger AC power relays from the EquiTech.

The lights are fully controlled via Z-Wave wireless protocols from both the automation system and dedicated remotes in the HT. While most light control is Z-Wave, there are still three or four legacy X10 devices around as well.

The HCPC is also host to several other key applications that I use to manage and tune the system with:

• DBX DriveRack software to manage and configure the crossovers, EQ and other parameters of these very flexible speaker processors. Being able to see the UI of the app from a laptop via RDC and tune from the listening seat is very handy.
• Behringer DCX software, does the same thing as the DriveRack software, but for that unit.
• ETF and R+D from Acoustisoft to measure the room and the speakers so I can tune crossovers, delays and parametric EQ's. I also use that information to tune acoustic treatments as well.

My HCPC also has an M-Audio Delta 2496 audio card that is used by FooBar 2000 to output 16/88.2 upsampled audio from the music server. The UI is controlled via the ViewPad 110 or a laptop doing RDC to the HCPC.

The music is on a central media server (with 1.2TB formatted, 2TB raw capacity) in pure .WAV form. This provides totally lossless playback with the widest compatibility. I also have high bit-rate VBR MP3's of all the music as well for the AudioTrons and Squeezeboxes around the house. Music is ripped using EAC with optimized settings.

The HCPC is on the network so the WiFi connected devices (Tablet, PDA and Laptops) can access it and so it can talk to IP based devices (Global Cache) as well as access the central Media server.

In addition to the above, I also use a Philips Pronto universal remote control. This provides instant volume and source selection access. In case the Axim is off or out of reach. I only keep a subset of devices on the Pronto, as I don't feel like maintaining several configurations up to date.

 

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