killswtch.netA geek’s thoughts on various stuff

Back in April I decided to take a well-earned break from work. During that week, I got a lot accomplished. Mostly I worked on my software project (details to be revealed fairly soon, probably) but towards the end I started my first decorating project in my flat.

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I’ve had quite a lot of requests now for the plans for the rack. It has always been my intention to share the designs, but they are hand drawn and I don’t currently have the ability to scan them. I am hoping that I can digitise them manually (draw them in something like Inkscape) and upload them to here. As with everything though, it will depend on me sitting down and doing it and not getting distracted by another idea!

One thing that has been lacking since the first build of the rack is ventilation. With both sets of doors closed, the inside can get quite warm, especially when iron is turned on. Not any more though, having just completed the installation of 2 active ventilation zones, lighting and a low voltage power supply system complete with rack-mount control panel.

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I’ve finally gotten around to fixing the top to the rack cabinet. It’s made from the door of an old storage-only cabinet, which was actually a fridge/freezer cabinet from Ikea. The top has been cut into the correct proportions for a while, but has just sat cluttering my floor until now.

To allow the many cables to enter the cabinet a notch of approx 8cm square was cut out of one of the panels. These two panels could then be slid together without the need to disconnect any cabling already in place.

Unfortunately I’ve discovered that the top of the cabinet isn’t exactly square – it’s slightly warped, as the photo below shows when the top had been fixed. I’m not happy with this so at some point I’ll have to put some effort into correcting it. Next time I build a rack I’ll make the top and bottom in more of a similar manner, with a known square-angled piece on which to fit the timber supports.

The top currently has no ventilation, but that will change soon thanks to a lovely huge ‘Big Boy’ fan.

Today I added the final 4 network points – there are now a total of 24 around the house.

The wiring project started about 14 months ago, with the plan to have at least 2 network points in all rooms except the bathroom. The final distribution has ended up as:

• Living room: 6
• Dining room: 4
• Kitchen: 2
• Pantry: 4
• Landing: 2
• Bedroom 1: 4
• Bedroom 3: 2

Despite considering that 24 ports might be a little excessive, I’ve come to realise that 24 ports isn’t quite enough especially when it comes to distributing analogue audio & video over CAT5 (i.e. not as IP data) since at least one port is required for each A/V combination depending on the quality of the signal desired. The living room should probably have 4 more ports, the kitchen could do with at least 2 more and a couple by the front door would come in useful for security purposes.

I’ve learnt a lot from the experience of doing this wiring, such as how to lift floorboards, that lathe & plaster ceilings are extremely fragile and plastering is nowhere near as easy as it looks.

Running the cables before moving in was certainly a good idea. It would have taken me probably another 12 months otherwise to get to this stage. It’s taken a lot more work than I expected, although the overall time is down to being in a lazy, bored and/or apathetic mood most weekends. I’m glad I did it though – the ports have come in useful for the MythTV system, for the family computer and soon enough the whole-house audio system. I’m also using them to trial some IP video cameras.

I’ve finally managed to find somewhere to buy stuff to tidy up some of the cabling around the house. A couple of weeks ago I ordered some trunking and a cable tray (which will replace the improvised MDF/timber one I constructed from offcuts) from Minitran.

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There are two main wiring routes that are part of my ongoing project to wire up our house for A/V and data distribution – one goes from the bottom of my wardrobe directly down to the room below, and the other goes across a short stretch of the landing and down into the pantry.

Until yesterday, the 4 x speaker and 6 x CAT5 cables going to the pantry were laid under the carpet, then pushed down through a hole in a floodboard and the corresponding hole in the pantry ceiling. The reason for this was simply that it was too much work at the time to run the cables properly, i.e. beneath the floorboards. At the time when I was running the cables, we weren’t living in the house so I only had relatively short visits in which to do the work.

I spent most of yesterday improving the situation by pulling up flooadboards, drilling holes in joists and reaching around in the dirt. All but 2 of the cables that were fed under the carpet are now out of sight under the floorboards of the landing. The remaining 2 cables are CAT5 feeds to bedroom 3, which take a slightly different route to the main runs and are already connected at both ends.

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The Homebrew Challenge gave me a reason to progress my projects, but over Christmas things have slowed down. Winning the competition has given me some money from the sale of my old car, so it seems fitting that the money is put towards finishing the current projects. This is my plan for the projects over the next 2 years.

		Purchases	Actions
January	2008	Zone 2 amplifier, Zone 4 amplifier	Improve rack ventilation
February	2008	Zone 3 amplifier, DVI/USB KVM
March	2008	Matrix switcher
April	2008	4u blanking plate, 1u blanking plate	Write control software
May	2008		Write control software
June	2008	Netiom xAP	Write control software
July	2008		Write control software
August	2008	Outdoor IP camera
September	2008	X10 modules
October	2008	Outdoor IP camera
November	2008
December	2008
January	2009	Netiom xAP + sensors
February	2009	Netiom xAP + sensors
March	2009	Netiom xAP + sensors
April	2009	Netiom xAP + sensors
May	2009	Netiom xAP + sensors
June	2009	Netiom xAP + sensors
July	2009	Netiom xAP + sensors
August	2009
September	2009
October	2009
November	2009
December	2009

I have purchased the 2 amplifiers for this month from eBay, but haven’t got around to the ventilation improvements as yet.

I received yet more odd looks and comments at work when a few weeks ago I received a delivery of 24 foam tiles. I ordered them from eBay as an experiment in trying to reduce the amount of noise eminating from the rack cabinet. At about £30 it was a bit of a gamble.

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Here’s a video I’ve put together about some of my projects. Sorry about the wobblyness and wonkyness – I’m not sure where I’ve put my tripod.