Convergent Home Technologies Ltd - UK

[totallymaxed]

Convergent Home Technologies Ltd are a UK based company with operations in the UK & Germany.

We have been working with LinuxMCE and its predecessor Pluto for over three years and we contribute both code and extensive testing resources to the Dev team. We also have a commercial agreement with Pluto to allow us to professionally install systems.

Our professionally installed product is called Dianemo and is based on the stable release of LinuxMCE. You can find more details about us on the Wiki here http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Convergenthome and also at our Web Site http://www.dianemo.co.uk.

This thread will be used to post information about new products and services from Convergent Home Technologies and we would also welcome any comments or feedback about our products here too.

Sincerely

The Convergent Home Technologies Team

[etxkesa]

I just looked through your web page. I can't see an email link. I was wondering if your smaller unit was compatible with the Logitech harmony universal remote?

[totallymaxed]

I just looked through your web page. I can't see an email link. I was wondering if your smaller unit was compatible with the Logitech harmony universal remote?

Hi,

If your referring to our MM200 MD http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Convergenthome#Model:_MM200 then it has a standard MCE receiver built in so if the Harmony is compatible MCE receivers then I would expect it to work. However we have never tested this so I cannot say for certain if this is the case or if there might be other issues using the Harmony with the MM200 or indeed with LinuxMCE generally.

All the best

Andrew

[1audio]

The Harmony remotes will work fine, just load the MCE codes (add a Windows MCE to your system in the harmony setup). But they offer no real utility when you have LMCE installed over the standard IR remote since LMCE does all of the Harmony smart things, many much better since it has state feedback.

[etxkesa]

Hi Andrew,
I was initially looking at the Nerve Center 100. As I right to assume that this unit can operate stand-alone? I was initially considering using the NC 100 with a Gigabit Ethernet connected NAS to provide the disk storage. The media centres would be a later addition (I assume your approach is to have the Media centres distributed around the home)
Is there any way to get Digital Radio (DABv2) into one of these units?

[totallymaxed]

Hi Andrew,
I was initially looking at the Nerve Center 100. As I right to assume that this unit can operate stand-alone? I was initially considering using the NC 100 with a Gigabit Ethernet connected NAS to provide the disk storage. The media centres would be a later addition (I assume your approach is to have the Media centres distributed around the home)
Is there any way to get Digital Radio (DABv2) into one of these units?

Hi etxkesa,

Yes the NC100 is a Hybrid Core and is also an Media Director too. Adding a NAS for external storage is no problem and then adding MD's as you want to later is fine too. As for DAB... we have not tested any DAB cards at all and LinuxMCE has no inbuilt support for DAB at present.

Please let me know if you have any further questions.

All the best

Andrew

[etxkesa]

Do you guys have an email for more detailed questions? Not that I mind conducting this discussion in the open.
Are there any reviews on the products? I would like an independent assessment of the noise level as this would be in a living room. Does the hard disk run all the time, or does it shut down when not in use?
Regards Ken Sayers

[totallymaxed]

Do you guys have an email for more detailed questions? Not that I mind conducting this discussion in the open.
Are there any reviews on the products? I would like an independent assessment of the noise level as this would be in a living room. Does the hard disk run all the time, or does it shut down when not in use?
Regards Ken Sayers

Hi Ken,

The NC100 is not totally silent but does have a low-noise cooling system and we have not had any complaints about its operating noise level in normal use in living environment. The Hard Drive does not spin-down when the system is up... LinuXMCE Cores tend to be doing too many things and have too many processes that need disc access for that to be practicable. See my private message for my email.

All the best

Andrew

[tommosmce]

Hi andrew, do you sell the nerve centre in a rackmount as i am going to install cat6 all around the house and terminating in a patch panel. also if i purchased the unit will it come preinstalled with linux mce ?

thanks

Martin

[tommosmce]

i am also going to place all my sources in my patch panel, sky, bluray , ps3 etc how do i go about controling these via rs232?

if i connect my 42" livingroom tv via rs232 can i use the tv's ir reciever to control all other devices in a different room?

thanks

Martin

[totallymaxed]

Hi andrew, do you sell the nerve centre in a rackmount as i am going to install cat6 all around the house and terminating in a patch panel. also if i purchased the unit will it come preinstalled with linux mce ?

thanks

Martin

Hi Martin,

We have a range of rackable Nerve Centre's and yes it can be pre-installed/configured with LinuxMCE or Dianemo. Private message me and we can discuss the details.

All the best

Andrew

[totallymaxed]

i am also going to place all my sources in my patch panel, sky, bluray , ps3 etc how do i go about controling these via rs232?

if i connect my 42" livingroom tv via rs232 can i use the tv's ir reciever to control all other devices in a different room?

thanks

Martin

To control any device in your rack you will need an interface  - either IR or rs232. We can advise on these. For your TV we would use a CAt5/6 IR extender & or blaster to send/receive IR in the TV localirt and route it back to the Rack.

Andrew