killswtch.netA geek’s thoughts on various stuff

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.

In the same way that the saying “you’ve got to spend money to make money” works, sometimes it’s also necessary to spend energy to save energy. An automated home may have more gadgetry than normal homes, but if set up correctly these little power-consumers can help to save energy. While the debate about whether the apparent global warming trend is the result of our actions, it can’t hurt to try to reduce energy use (or rather, conversion) as much as possible.

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Before we moved into our new house, I lifted some of the carpets and floorboards and installed some runs of cat5 and speaker cable. In total there are 24 cat5 cables and 4 pairs of speaker cable. I’m not sure the length of network cable that was used, but a rough estimate is 400m – not quite as impressive as some other installations I’ve seen details of, but it’s a fair amount to pull on your own! I know exactly how much speaker cable was used though, because I used the whole reel – 100m.

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I have currently have a two different naming schemes in use, to identify my various computers and networks. My home network is called ‘elemental’, and each node attached to the network that has an IP has a name taken from the periodic table of elements. The computer I’m typing this on at the moment is called ‘aluminium’ … because it’s got an alumimium case. My external severs are under the ’sol’ network, which currently only has one node called ‘earth’.

Now I’ve had the idea of naming my various projects. I just need to come up with a naming scheme. Maybe subatomic particles? There are enough of those to keep me going for a while, especially once CERN get the LHC (what a lovely retro site) experiment running. Let’s try that:

• Project Electron – The rack cabinet (contains most of the other projects)
• Project Gluon – Cat5 wiring (holds stuff together, in a network sense)
• Project Quark – Audio distribution system (Quark in DS9 is a Ferrenghi … has big ears … can hear well …)
• Project Proton – Security & surveilance (can’t think of an excuse)
• Project Neutron – MythTV install

Of course, unless I’m going to name things after various versions of some of the particles (up quark, down quark etc.), it is actually quite limited for the time being. And not being a physicist (beyond A-level) doesnt help.

I can’t think of any other schemes at the moment.

Hmm, this has turned into quite a monologue. I think I’ll shelve the idea for the time being, unless someone can come up with better suggestions.

This project started off as being a cheap way to have a 19″ rack in which to mount my growing amount of equipment and future projects. It turned out to not be as cheap as I’d hoped, and it’s taken several months of intermittent work to (almost) complete, but I’m pleased with the results.

There are still a few finishing touches to be done, such as adding the top, adding the lock to the rear, mounting the new bolts to the front door, cutting out the bottom ventilation hole and adding some fans. Future modifications could include adding lighting and environmental monitoring/control.

Below is a photo log showing how it was done.

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