Author: Stephen Rowles Date: To: Hampshire LUG Discussion List Subject: Re: [Hampshire] Does anyone else have any mad ideas to do with
computers for if they came into a large sum of money?
> Well the title is kind of confusing, so I'll explain more. ;-) >
> My mad idea to do with computers for if I came into a large sum of money
> is this.... (obviously if I had my own house if this happened - My Mum
> wouldn't appreciate me filling the whole house with computers,
> unfortunately!)
>
> I would fill the entire house with computers - One in every room!
I like my computers to be subtle, but must be interconnected with high
speed wired network (don't like wireless not reliable enough or enough
bandwidth for most things!).
Rather than computers as such I would want number of touch screens
embedded into walls in each room. These touch screens would connected to a
central server that controlled everything in the house, lights, power,
heating, music, TV etc. etc.
Couple this with speakers wired into every room (oh, and btw the garden
counts as a room, so I'd need a waterproof version of this for out there
too) and a central media server so that every room can play back any
recorded TV, stored hi-def video, or music to any of the touch screens /
speakers in any set of locations.
All this would also be exposed via the web, so I can turn lights on and
off, music on and off, schedule recordings, adjust heating etc. etc.
remotely. This would also allow access from a roaming iPhone or similar
when I couldn't be bothered to get up and use one of the touch panels.
In the lounge there would be a large LCD TV (or maybe a projector) and
surround sound speaker set for main media playback, probably with a
wii-mote interface rather than touch screen.
On a sub-note. I already have part of this done, I have a central server
with all my photos, music and DVD's. Cat-6 Ethernet in the walls. I have a
media PC attached to the TV running Freevo which will play music etc. over
the network, and records digital TV. This has a web interface that allows
me to schedule recordings from anywhere served over my broadband
connection, in theory I could stream them too but my upstream bandwidth
isn't good enough :D
