What would be the perfect value fore money system?

[RedTop]

I am planning to build the ”perfect” true value for money media centre system, and have after a lot of research have decided to base it on Linux MCE!
So I am now at a situation where I want to find out which hardware to build it on, and where better to ask than hare?
My priorities are as follows:
TV

• 1.   I receive my “local” television via Cable TV.
• 2.   Foreign (read British) television channels are delivered via the Internet (I-player).
• 3.   The TV tuner must support MPEG4.
• 4.   I want to be able to watch one channel and record another.
• 5.   Ideally, I should be able to watch up to 4 different television channels at the same time on different televisions in different rooms.

Radio

• 1.   I receive my “local” radio channels via Cable TV.
• 2.   Foreign radio channels are all collected via Internet.
• 3.   Ideally, FM should be supported.
• 4.   Ideally, DAB should be supported.
• 5.   Radio channels should be played on 4 different systems in the home, with individual channel selection.

Home automation

• 1.   The lighting in the home should be controllable remotely.
• 2.   The heating in the home should be controllable remotely.
• 3.   It would be nice if the cooker should be remotely controllable.
• 4.   It would be nice if the oven should be remotely controllable.

Telecom

• 1.   In home telecommunication takes place via VoIP.
• 2.   There are 4 telephones in the home between it would be nice to be able to switch calls.
• 3.   We have 4 telephone numbers with the main telephone number ending in 55 and sub extensions ending on respectively 54, 53 and 52 (also have 51).
• 4.   Calls to a “sub” extension should be transferable to a mobile phone associated with the extension.
• 5.   Each telephone extension must have each own voice mail with one main mail box.
• 6.   Voicemail should be accessible through a web interface.

Security

• 1.   In stead of keys for locking and unlocking access to the home, SMS messages (or text messages) from authorised mobile phones are to be used, with the codes “lock” and “unlock” to carry out the respective commands.
• 2.   There should be two external video cameras with night vision connected.
• 3.   There should be two internal video cameras with night vision connected.
• 4.   Video cameras should be controlled via SMS messages (or text messages) from authorised mobile phones, with the commands “video X” on” and “video X” off, where “X” indicate the number of the video camera, or “video all on and “video all off”.
• 5.   Magnetic contact alarms are to be fitted to 10 windows.
• 6.   Alarm system will be controlled by authorised mobile phones with the commands “arm” and “disarm” performing the respective commands.
• 7.   Any unauthorised entry should execute an audio alarm and establish connection to pre defined mobile phones – from where video surveillance can also be viewed.

Hardware

• 1.   The system should have as few wires as at all possible.
• 2.   Speakers should be as small as possible – without this hampering the sound dramatically that is!
• 3.   In the household, there already are:
  
  • a.   One 50” plasma TV.
  • b.   One ASUS Eee Top ET1602 desktop touch computer.
  • c.   Two ASUS Eee Box B202, each with a 19” WXVGA monitor.
  • d.   A Linksys WRT54GL router.
  • e.   4 lap-top computers (two Toshiba and two ASUS Eee PC 900
• 4.   The servers and router is located in a cupboard with electricity and air intake.
• 5.   We believe that “silence is golden” and that power consumption should be held a minimum.
• 6.   It is planed to ZigBy enable all electrical installations and heating in the whole house hold.

Now the question is, which hardware components would you “experts” out there recommend that I invest in to make the “best valuable for money” system?

[merkur2k]

Thats quite the laundry list of features, we will look forward to the patches that enable them.
Have you watched the demo videos to know what is possible with this system?

[colinjones]

Everything in "TV" is possible. You can watch British TV by using the built in browser on any MD. For cable, if you are allowed to decode using your own hardware then you can use some DVB-C cards with a CAM/CI unit and this will take the streams directly into LinuxMCE with no loss in quality. If not, then you will need to use capture cards and some mechanism to control the cable box (USBUIRT, serial, Ethernet, etc).

For radio - there is a mechanism for setting up Internet radio stations as scenarios.... its not very scalable but does work well. I think someone has put some thought into this on the Shoutcast side, but that doesn't really apply to normal Internet radio. FM/DAB - not sure what solutions exist to take these into the system digitally... I'm sure there is something, but worst case you can at least use LinuxMCE to control your existing receivers, change inputs and volume levels.

For HA the first two points are achievable using several different technologies... perhaps ZWave or KNX/EIB are the way to go for you. Don't know about controlling ovens and cookers... I suspect that isn't wise anyway, could be safety issues.

Telecom - all of that is pretty much standard in LinuxMCE, you just have to configure the Asterisk side of things, and that integrates with LinuxMCE. You access the voice mail through the LinuxMCE interface

For the security - you would need to add an SMS extension of some kind to Asterisk. After that there is no reason why you can't trigger any function you like (including lock/unlock doors) using a messagesend command to send the appropriate DCE message. There are some limited options for doing video cameras, not sure what you want to achieve with that, but certainly you can at least use Motion to trigger security events with video cameras. For the alarm system itself, there are several different alarm systems supported, or you can use Zwave/KNX/EIB HA devices and let LinuxMCE be the alarm system.

Yes, LinuxMCE can call mobile phones, etc on its security triggers and allow you to view security camera stills, speak to the house, etc.

Eee boxes and Eee Tops are box supported as MDs. Don't go down the ZigBy path, it isn't currently supported and discussions in the past have settled on the position that the return on investment in supporting it isn't worth it.

BTW: you are biting off far more than you can chew with this list of features. I would strongly recommend that you start with a small LMCE installation, and then slowly add the features as you become familiar with the system.

[totallymaxed]

I am planning to build the ”perfect” true value for money media centre system, and have after a lot of research have decided to base it on Linux MCE!
So I am now at a situation where I want to find out which hardware to build it on, and where better to ask than hare?
My priorities are as follows:
TV

• 1.   I receive my “local” television via Cable TV.
• 2.   Foreign (read British) television channels are delivered via the Internet (I-player).
• 3.   The TV tuner must support MPEG4.
• 4.   I want to be able to watch one channel and record another.
• 5.   Ideally, I should be able to watch up to 4 different television channels at the same time on different televisions in different rooms.

Radio

• 1.   I receive my “local” radio channels via Cable TV.
• 2.   Foreign radio channels are all collected via Internet.
• 3.   Ideally, FM should be supported.
• 4.   Ideally, DAB should be supported.
• 5.   Radio channels should be played on 4 different systems in the home, with individual channel selection.

Home automation

• 1.   The lighting in the home should be controllable remotely.
• 2.   The heating in the home should be controllable remotely.
• 3.   It would be nice if the cooker should be remotely controllable.
• 4.   It would be nice if the oven should be remotely controllable.

Telecom

• 1.   In home telecommunication takes place via VoIP.
• 2.   There are 4 telephones in the home between it would be nice to be able to switch calls.
• 3.   We have 4 telephone numbers with the main telephone number ending in 55 and sub extensions ending on respectively 54, 53 and 52 (also have 51).
• 4.   Calls to a “sub” extension should be transferable to a mobile phone associated with the extension.
• 5.   Each telephone extension must have each own voice mail with one main mail box.
• 6.   Voicemail should be accessible through a web interface.

Security

• 1.   In stead of keys for locking and unlocking access to the home, SMS messages (or text messages) from authorised mobile phones are to be used, with the codes “lock” and “unlock” to carry out the respective commands.
• 2.   There should be two external video cameras with night vision connected.
• 3.   There should be two internal video cameras with night vision connected.
• 4.   Video cameras should be controlled via SMS messages (or text messages) from authorised mobile phones, with the commands “video X” on” and “video X” off, where “X” indicate the number of the video camera, or “video all on and “video all off”.
• 5.   Magnetic contact alarms are to be fitted to 10 windows.
• 6.   Alarm system will be controlled by authorised mobile phones with the commands “arm” and “disarm” performing the respective commands.
• 7.   Any unauthorised entry should execute an audio alarm and establish connection to pre defined mobile phones – from where video surveillance can also be viewed.

Hardware

• 1.   The system should have as few wires as at all possible.
• 2.   Speakers should be as small as possible – without this hampering the sound dramatically that is!
• 3.   In the household, there already are:
  
  • a.   One 50” plasma TV.
  • b.   One ASUS Eee Top ET1602 desktop touch computer.
  • c.   Two ASUS Eee Box B202, each with a 19” WXVGA monitor.
  • d.   A Linksys WRT54GL router.
  • e.   4 lap-top computers (two Toshiba and two ASUS Eee PC 900
• 4.   The servers and router is located in a cupboard with electricity and air intake.
• 5.   We believe that “silence is golden” and that power consumption should be held a minimum.
• 6.   It is planed to ZigBy enable all electrical installations and heating in the whole house hold.

Now the question is, which hardware components would you “experts” out there recommend that I invest in to make the “best valuable for money” system?

Hi,

The vast majority of the things on your list are 'do-able' in some way but are not necessarily automatically there and will need a lot of manual intervention from you.

However as I and others have said many time here in the forums before putting a massive list together and just posting it here is not the best way to go. It makes the act of helping or responding a big job for the responder and it also may make many people here feel like you being a little 'lazy'. Its far better to break your list into more specific questions and post them separately - you'll find you will get a better response and more useful and helpful ones too!

So having said all of the above I will make a couple of simple observations;

- As has been suggested here already i would recommend learning LinuxMCE on a smaller experimental system at first - attemping this scale of system out of the gate is just a recipe for disaster in my experience.
- Do some research here on what control technologies are supported by LinuxMCE - ZWave, KNX/EIB, X10, ENocean etc etc ...ZigBee is not currently supported.

Hope the above is of use to you... and welcome!

All the best

Andrew