Sam asked me a slurry of questions about a home automation system he is planning to install. I’ve boiled the questions down to give readers some basic information about installing a reasonable system. First, home automation refers to computerized systems which can control almost all the aspects of your home electronically: lighting, heat, surveillance and entertainment. And it works from one centralized location.
Depending on the complexity of the computerization, home automation can be a fairly expensive proposition and may be daunting for a typical home owner. If you are considering such a system it may be worth it to contact an electrical contractor who has experience installing such systems. If your house has older electrical, the cost of implementation may be much too high and may outweigh the prospective savings.
Most systems start with a computer and either a dedicated operating system or suite of software designed for this purpose. Again, depending on the complexity of the system, the computer can connect electrically to your furnace, air conditioner, alarm/video system, stereo, and television. Connecting to your heating or lighting system generally requires a professional electrician.
I have experience with a free piece of home automation software called Linux MCE. The Linux MCE package allows users to tie into all the home electrical systems I’ve outlined here plus phone systems. Computer requirements are not substantial; however, I found a dual core processor with two gigabytes of memory to be ideal. Depending on the hardware, either a blue tooth or radio frequency device needs to be installed.
Once the computer is setup, an electrical contractor may be called to replace the electric light switches in the house along with the thermostat. One customer asked me to integrate with their alarm system which required the alarm company to provide a wire-run to the computer location. Programming the computer does not take a substantial amount of time for either system because the components are designed to integrate together.
If you are thinking about installing such a system I would Google the term “home automation” to get a better understanding of the work and cost involved. I would expect the base computer to be somewhere in the $800.00 price range. Depending on the complexity of the automation, all the components should be an additional $500.00 to $1000.00. You should also factor in the cost of hiring an electrical contractor and computer technician if you don’t plan to do the work yourself.
Juan would like to know if he can use his older computer equipment for anything useful. He asks, “Are my four older computers useful for anything?” In addition to tying your computers to a rope and dangling them from a boat, older equipment may still have useful value. Although they may be too slow for some modern Windows operating systems, you may be able to install specialized alternative Linux operating systems.
One very useful operating system which doesn’t require a substantial amount of processing power or memory is FreeNAS. As the name implies it is free so the investment is minimal. FreeNAS turns your would-be boat anchor into a network storage device which allows you to move files from one computer to another fairly easily.
Any computer with a couple hard drives will work fine as a storage device. Thousands of MP3 music files can fit on a standard 40GB hard drive. Benefits of such a system include access from any computer in the house and minimizing storage space on your computer.
Tip of the week: Read online contracts prior to pushing the “OK” or “I agree” button.
(Jeromy Patriquin is the President of Laptop & Computer Repair, Inc. located at 509 Main St. in Gardner. You can e-mail him at Jeromy@LocalComputerWiz.com or call him directly at (978) 919-8059.)