Life's Good 1

WARNING: Contains extreme geek content.

Have been able to get a grip on the tech-head aspect of the new home. Not interested in automating everything but do have a couple of 'must haves' on my list;

1. I want to stream movies to the home theatre and family room.
2. I want the ability to play music/radio in at least two areas (family / dining area and al freso at least)

The setup will consist of a six port patch panel (two cat5e runs each to Bedroom 2, the Home Theatre and Family Room) above the top shelp of the linen cupboard and a data port from the Telstra PON (internet connection) and a double GPO.

This following is the equipment I have in mind at the moment, but it's all subject to change depending on what's released between now and when I go out buying and of course, if any other comparable piece of tech is released; shinier, more buttons, brighter lights, that sort of thing :)

DATA
The data is going to be connected to a wireless access point for when I use my notebook PC, from there I will be connecting it to a 16 port switch, which is probably more than I need, but there is always 'future proofing'!

Storage is going to be two media hub NAS boxes. One containing two 1TB hard drives (in RAID 1 - which means I only get 1TB of storage but the data is copied on the second drive), for streaming music and movies. The second server will contain two 500GB drives (again RAID 1) for documents and data that would usually be stored on the local PC. Am going to use 'Sync Toy', which is a free Microsoft product to back up the 'My Document' folders of all the PCs on the network to this server.

The wireless access point and switch.

The two servers, the top is for movies and music.

MUSIC

Music will stream from the server to the media player and then through an audio matrix so that separate sources can be played in individual rooms. At the moment I will be having ceiling speakers installed in the Family / Dining area and the al fresco. I hope to expand this to the courtyard behind the Master Bedroom and into the study, but this depends on funds, access and funds.

MP3s will be played using this set up, the remote is touch screen and since it uses the data network it does not have to be in 'line of sight' to work. It hasn't been released in Australia as yet, but I wrote to the distributor and it should be available soon - fingers crossed.

To be continued ..