Friday, December 7, 2007

Intelligent Home

I just got my broadband connection upgraded last month from 128 kbps to 1.5 Mbps using Cable via FirstMedia (KabelVision). All the sudden, now I can watch any movie from YouTube without glitch. I can also do P2P networking using Deluge bittorrent client (so far the BEST bittorrent client running on a Linux System) at the full 1.5 Mbps speed. I have tried to download a movie video (around 700 MBytes), and it took less than 2 hours to complete download.

The Pending Intelligent Home Project
I remembered that my current home was designed & built from scratch with Intelligent Home/Building concept in mind. My house was built during the Indonesia economic crisis. The physical house completed at 2003 (took 1 year to design & 2 years to finish), without the intelligence part, because I run out of money :-P

Even so, the wiring at the house is already in place. Every corner of my house already equipped with 3 ports of Cat 5e UTP cabling (ready to support up to 1 Gbps GigabitEthernet connection). I just didn't have more energy to finish the intelligence part of the house.

My Dream
My house will detect any movement and will perform certain task based on preprogrammed input. For example :
  • Turn on/off light and aircon when somebody enter/leave a room
  • Turn off TV when nobody moving around near the TV for a period of time
  • Turn on/off certain lamps, swimming pool at a predefined time
  • Send picture via MMS (or email) if there is abnormal activity around the house
Other facilities at the house :
  • WiFi everywhere - No blank spot at the house
  • Unified Communication - PABX is dead, every communication is done via IP Tel, and WiFi phone. Newly recorded voice mail message will be sent via email to me/my wife. Newly received fax also sent to my/my wife's email as attachment
  • File Server to store/auto backup the laptops
  • Multimedia Server to store movies (from Internet/P2P)
  • Monitoring activities at home by accessing the IP Camera
  • Every guess must leave a valid identification before entering the front gate
  • Infra Red camera to monitor the house environment at night
  • Always available connection via Dual Homing to 2 ISPs (cable & 3.5G)
  • Listening to favorite music in every corner of the house
  • Listening to any favorite radio from around the world
  • etc.
Intelligent Home Components
I imagine that I could actually get my dream home by installing the following components :
  • 24 port 10/100/1000 Ethernet switch at the wiring closet, the Ethernet port must support PoE for IP Phones
  • IP Phones at every room
  • Integrated Service Router with VoIP Gateway module, Firewall, 3G module, and NAT functionality
  • Broadband Router connected to Service Provider (currently First Media)
  • Some WiFi Access Point at certain areas to eliminate blank spots
  • Wireless IP Phone
  • File Server
  • Video Server
  • Multimedia PCs
  • IP Surveillance Camera for inside and outside the house
  • Web Cam
  • Fax Server
  • SMS Gateway
  • IP Radio
  • IP set top box
  • WiFi Audio/Video system
  • Big LCD screen with RGB connection to my PCs
  • UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) for servers
  • PowerLine (ethernet connection via electrical cable)
  • Networked DVD Player
  • X10 Home Automation
  • IP based motion detector
  • Electrical GenSet (may not be required since electricity has always been very stable and highly available at home)
Next steps will be prioritizing the features (also the wallet thickness....)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Also check this article

UPS Technology