X10 Community Forum

🔌General Home Automation => Automating Your House => Automated Home Showcase => Topic started by: aussie mate on March 29, 2012, 06:07:37 AM

Title: Home Automation - my setup in Sydney Australia
Post by: aussie mate on March 29, 2012, 06:07:37 AM
Here is an outline of my HA setup.
As with many others its still work in progress.
I have also provided an network diagram FYI.
I haven't put much details around the open air microphone but getting this working correctly has made a big difference to the overall system.

Controller = CM15E with ActiveHome Pro v3.316

AHP with Smart Macros

Other software:
BVC
BlueWatch WiFi
Bluewatch BT
Conference composer
Myservant v7
X10 Commander (android)
Autom8

Computers:
HA software running on Dell 1.8Ghz with 2GB RAM
XP professional v2002 - Service pack 3
Asus Atom N450 Touchscreen PC – running Windows 7, Myservant client

X10 hardware (230v 433Mhz EU standards)
Lighting units = 10
Appliance units = 2
Sensors = 15 (IR & dry contact)
CM11=1
SS13 palm pad = 2
TM13 =2 (for transmission across phases)
HA136 = 1 (for extending range of x10 RF)

Other Hardware
4 x Beyerdynamic MPC 23 Boundary microphone with phantom power
Polycom Vortex EF2280 mixer
Multi zone Sherwood amplifier
Behringer UCA202 external sound card
USBUIRT

Macros & general operation:
Turns external garden lights on & off
Radio, Music and sound controlled by Myservant and BVC
Sensors in all the main rooms turn lights on & off when occupied
Myservant greets me & kids when we come home.
BVC reminds us to take out trash bin on collection night.
Myservant provide weather updates
Provides security alerts via email & sms
Title: Re: Home Automation - my setup in Sydney Australia
Post by: Knightrider on March 30, 2012, 07:12:00 PM
Aussie Mate:

Nice documentation. +1 from me.  I remember when you were just starting out with the MyServant software, and it looks like you managed to tweek your system to near perfection.  Thanks for posting!
Title: Re: Home Automation - my setup in Sydney Australia
Post by: aussie mate on March 31, 2012, 02:56:09 AM
Thanks, I think Myservant is one of the most underrated 3rd party systems for HA. It has many features that others only dream of - plus it is reliable (many thanks to Vincent).

Up until a recent purchase of a improved mixer - the open air mic system was ok but not reliable or consistent.
The new Polycom Vortex is a state of the art voice activated matrix switching mixer.
It has input & output configurable filters, noise cancellation, echo cancellation and auto gain for each input plus more.

I yet to fully implement its features - one that I am considering is being able to switch the BVC outputs or announcements to different amplifier inputs or locations depending on what mic is activated.
This will mean that if you speak in the bedroom - it will answer you using the bedroom speakers.

However I will need to to bed down the current config first