Basement Remodeling almost complete

Posted by DrunkenLizard, Jul 18 2009, 11:31 AM

Been finishing off my walk out basement as of late and dissasembling my office to make way for the nursery. Hasn't left much time to get anything HA done around the house but that will soon change. Electrician just finished installing the outlets in my wiring closet yesterday so power might help things progress. All that's left with the basement is hanging the doors, carpet, paint, and trim.

SageTV up and running

Posted by DrunkenLizard, May 19 2009, 08:52 AM

Spent some time last night setting up sage on my dvr/automation server, and a couple hours digging through boxes trying to find usb uirt. But everything is up and running now.

More work done in the garage

Posted by DrunkenLizard, Apr 24 2009, 10:35 AM in Installation

Well I have the garage insulated and half the dry wall up. Managed to get a window contact mounted last night, so that's one down and 16 more to go. Well wiring them in would probably help. Hopefully tonight I can get some smurf tube ran to the lv boxes and get some wires in those walls. Dry wall should be delivered tomorrow or Monday depending on the weather. Then I can start getting the garage but back together and organized.

360's for streaming media

Posted by DrunkenLizard, Apr 14 2009, 10:52 AM

Wanted to mention that I've been using a few xbox 360's around the house to stream media until a more permanent solution (sage) can be implemented. Have to say that I've been rather impressed with this solution so far though I'm not trying to stream any HD. I've just been using windows media player 11 pointed at my media server. Haven't run into any problems with streaming to multiple xbox's at the same time. I have two on wifi and two hardwired I'll try streaming the same video to multiple boxes and see if there's any stuttering. Other than that I've played around with using Playon for watching hulu on the xbox and ps3 as well with mixed results (mainly having to update the software every couple days)

Conduit Installed

Posted by DrunkenLizard, Apr 14 2009, 10:33 AM

Ran a 2in conduit from the basement wiring closet to the crawlspace above the garage last night and hauled all the boxes of cable up. Then I got called out for a friends birthday. So I wasn't able to get anything hooked back up but everything is in place for me to finish it up this week.

Out of hibernation

Posted by DrunkenLizard, Apr 8 2009, 09:09 AM

Well as the snow and ice begin melting off the lakes I've stumbled out of my cave and started working on things again. Pulled out all the old wiring, at least I shouldn't run short on patch cables any time soon. Got the garage cleaned out and the cabinets moved in for the work bench, which was promptly buried under boxes.

Can Mounted

Posted by DrunkenLizard, Feb 9 2009, 06:48 PM

Well I took some time over the weekend to start moving the wiring closet, I have the back wall framed up and my wiring can mounted. Rather happy with how it turned out, never framed up anything before. Still need to get the side walls framed up and electrical run, but I should be able to start running cables and configuring my can in the mean time. I figure dropping two 2 1/2in conduits should be sufficient, those will contain all the audio, video, data, and security feeds for the second floor and garage.everything from the first floor and basement shall be run through the basement ceiling to the closet.

Progress

Posted by DrunkenLizard, Feb 7 2009, 01:27 PM

Moving the wiring closet to a new location, there is a 4x8 bump out in the basement that should work well. It's directly below the front entry way and closet, this shares a wall with the garage which has some openings to the crawlspace above the second floor.

I started framing up the rear wall of the closet last night so I can get my wiring can mounted and the rest of my panels up. I wonder if cherry walls in my wiring closet is a little overkill? I can get half inch cherry plywood (or thinner) for less than drywall.

Dilema

Posted by DrunkenLizard, Feb 5 2009, 12:05 PM

Well I've been told "you have to get that thingy wired up so we can watch the stuff (DVR) in the other room by the end of this weekend" So I guess that's my goal this week.

That still leaves me with the dilema about moving the wiring closet, right now it is directly below the laundry closet. Should I move it to a different location in the basement and rerun 1200ft of cable or leave it where it is and try to reduce the chance of water getting to the equipment in the event of a leak?

One step forward Two steps back

Posted by DrunkenLizard, Feb 4 2009, 02:29 PM

Well I actually got something done last night. My old workstation has been brought back from the grave to function as my cqc/sage server. Sagetv and cqc have been installed but thats about as far as I got. Need to pick up some tuner cards and an hd pvr, as well as a an HD Directv box (need to keep the Directv HD DVR in operation untill sage is up and running 100%) Had an old tuner card but that does not appear to be compatible with sage, and i have a usb tuner around somewhere which should work for testing purposes and getting one sd recordings going.

Still haven't scratched the surface of CQC yet, looks like that will be a couple of weeks unless I magically get the rest of my video wiring done and terminated.

Guess the biggest hold up so far is wiring closet location, I realized last week that the location I've been running all my wiring to is directly below the laundry room. So I either ghetto rig some kind of water proof ceiling and channel system for the wiring closet or I move it and rerun all my previous pulls. Or i might have enough slack to reach under the steps but I wouldn't be able to fit a full size rack in that space.