House Projects

[scheides]

Something showed up at my house last friday....bought it in a moment of weakness. Hilarity/awesomeness ensued.

Before the TV arrived, I wired up an outlet with spare parts I had lying around the house. This went quick, but with an old house I definitely had to change my plan about placement several times over!



I had a 40" out here and moved it into the bedroom....the 32" I put on the tv stand for a nice before/after





New bedroom setup:



A few days later (I suck at timing, oh well), a few more boxes showed up.





Mount up, this thing is the bomb! Holds 300 pounds...I could seriously hang from it. Monoprice #6517.


TV up on the wall, testing everything out:


Pulling cable down to basement was no easy task, but hey what else am I going to do at 2am? Tidied up the cabling all nice once I was done:




Can see it all the way from the kitchen--woot!


Upstairs all cleaned and buttoned up:


All in all, I got a bunch of 50' long cables:
-2x 24awg CL2 HDMI (1 for immediate use, 1 for future)
-2x 3.5mm stereo jacks (1 for stereo output from tv down to reciever, 1 for IR emitters)
-3x 14awg CL2 speaker wire (left, right, center).

Downstairs I have my DVR and old-arse receiver:



Still need to clean up everything but I'm already enjoying the isht out of this setup!

[polishmafia]

Awesome! I see you were watching Fast n Loud haha!

[Halon]

Originally Posted by polishmafia

Awesome! I see you were watching Fast n Loud haha!

Lol, beard!!!

[goodhart]

Fuck yea! Thats a sweet setup man

[turbotalon1g]

Do you have an extender for the remote control sensor thinga-ma-bob?

I never knew how these setups work.

[scheides]

Originally Posted by polishmafia

Awesome! I see you were watching Fast n Loud haha!

LOL Hell yea!

Originally Posted by goodhart

Fuck yea! Thats a sweet setup man

Thx!

Originally Posted by turbotalon1g

Do you have an extender for the remote control sensor thinga-ma-bob?

I never knew how these setups work.

http://www.monoprice.com/products/pr...seq=1&format=2

$17 and change, and setup is easy. Please IR receiver sensor on TV so you can point your remote at it. Run cord from there to the little box (2/3 the size of a deck of cards, requires a DC adapter), and then run a cord from there down to your cable box/stereo/receiver/etc where there are these little emitters that you either dangle in front of the equipment or stick right over the IR sensors. All of teh cords are 3.5mm stereo plugs so it's really easy to extend the emitters and the cables are small/thin so you can run them wherever.

Basically the point is to just extend your remote control's output down to the gear that is hidden away. It is a bit disconcerting in that you cannot see the clock/channel/volume level on whatever you're controlling, but once you get used to it it is fine--it works exactly as though the gear was sitting right in front of you.

[JET]

I have the same remote IR setup sitting downstairs, does it work good? Any delay from the time you press the button to when it does something? I am wondering if it will work ok on the cable box. Looks good man and Monoprice rocks!

[98gstaherns]

Ok since im not seeing it at the moment it.. But did i read someone that some one on here does gutters? Or have any recommendations for places to get them done.

Also took down the 6 foot tall grass that over took my yard since we moved in our place in the middle of summer. its nice to have a somewhat yard again!

[BriK]

Originally Posted by 98gstaherns

Ok since im not seeing it at the moment it.. But did i read someone that some one on here does gutters? Or have any recommendations for places to get them done.

We just did our gutters and went with Ficek Fabrication (www.FicekFabrication.com) out of IGH. We got 5 quotes and they weren't the cheapest but also not the most expensive, but we chose them because Darren (the owner) was really nice, really detailed, and we felt he'd do the best job. I also liked his gutter guard system the best; we went with micro-mesh metal frame option (indicated on top of the Gutter Guard page) which seems to do the best job and comes with a 20-year warranty.

[goodhart]

95tsi does/did gutters, but he lives in Montana now.

[98gstaherns]

Thanks ill check them out!

[scheides]

I've used this space on the side of my garage for everything from motorcycles to a car to construction trash storage. After the neighbors re-did their fence last year I've been slowly-but surely cleaning up back here, extending the retaining wall all the way back, and finally I decided it was time to get rid of the f-ugly fence that was shoddily installed before I took ownership.

Loaded up mah truck at the home despot:


Dug out a good hole and filled it with a 4x4 and some cement (that's my dad helping):


Then affixed some 6' high gates to either side for nice easy access!


I have it locked with a big bike lock for now, but I'll find something better down the road. I ordered up some black privacy slats to fill the gaps a bit since I live in the city, but now I have a nice open space beside my garage for...something!

[goodhart]

fill it with a 1g

[A//// Guy]

Nice work! I dug 10 holes for posts over the weekend too, 7 more to go and then its fence time too. Isnt it fun?

So much to do before it snows.

[scheides]

I've been on a bit of a home automation kick lately. Mostly just dabbling, trying to keep things on the cheap, semi-aimed at increasing efficiency.

First off, in the name of efficiency, I replaced of the most commonly used bulbs in my house with Cree brand LEDs from Home Depot. I made a nifty spreadsheet weighing hours used per day, wattage, etc and figure I should save a solid $20 per month with about a $300 investment. These things are supposed to last 20 years, so if they hold up like some of the other LED bulbs I have, I will be happy. I got the soft-white version and they are nearly identical to the incandescent bulbs that I replaced them with.



Next up, I installed a 'smarter' thermostat. I had a cheaper unit that I could not get the schedule to work to save my life, so I grabbed a Nest on black friday. Instead of putting it in the corner next to a window where the current thermostat is, I got some 18/5 cable, cut a few holes (PITA in this old house, bleh) and mounted it right in the center of the entire living space.



This thing is awesome, it has a motion sensor on it and does auto-scheduling and auto-away, and I can check the status or change things on it from anywhere, anytime.





Next up I grabbed a few of the Belkin WeMo light switches. These things are nice for an out-of-the-box product. I ordered from amazon but you can get them at BestBuy now as well! Basically I wanted to setup a schedule so lights were on/off surrounding my normal schedule, and some random on/offs for semi-theft deterrent.



Next piece to the puzzle is garage monitoring. I wanted a way I could open/close the garage remotely and get notified if it gets left open. I decided to do a little home-brew action with a raspberry pi. I followed this guy's tutorial & codebase and have been modifying it to add features.

Setup for testing on my ottoman:


Mag switch installed:


Temporary wiring install for initial testing. I think I bumped some other cabling though when I was installing, because my existing garage door openers don't seem to work as well as they used to, only from about 5-10' away, not outside the garage.



I added a rpi camera module & setup the dashboard so it would display a static image that is updated every 5 seconds, and then I wrote some scripts that will email & txt me in case the door gets left open for too long. Lots of refinement to do here, but I can access the unit remotely and it works absolutely perfect thus far.









'Access Door' is the human-sized door with a handle on it, I will be running a mag sensor to it as well but for now the pin that would connect to it is just simply unhooked (thus it shows 'Open').

And yes, I will be cleaning up the wiring and mounting, just wanted to get things rolling with it

[asshanson]

Originally Posted by scheides

First off, in the name of efficiency, I replaced of the most commonly used bulbs in my house with Cree brand LEDs from Home Depot. I made a nifty spreadsheet weighing hours used per day, wattage, etc and figure I should save a solid $20 per month with about a $300 investment. These things are supposed to last 20 years, so if they hold up like some of the other LED bulbs I have, I will be happy. I got the soft-white version and they are nearly identical to the incandescent bulbs that I replaced them with.

You inspired me to do LED replacement. So far I have just done the kitchen/dining room: 7 recessed floods, all were 65W. Replaced them with GE 10W that are actually a little brighter than the old bulbs. I went with GE because I found them for a few bucks cheaper than the Cree and the specs were nearly identical. Next I need to find 6 LED candle style for the living room ceiling fan and bedroom ceiling fan. That will probably be it, since we don't use the other rooms much. I figured it will take about a year for them to pay for themselves at $7.50 each.

Next up on the list is a projector for the basement. I'm getting one from our realtor, it's a couple years old but can't complain about free. Just have to find a screen now.

[asshanson]

Originally Posted by asshanson

You inspired me to do LED replacement. So far I have just done the kitchen/dining room: 7 recessed floods, all were 65W. Replaced them with GE 10W that are actually a little brighter than the old bulbs. I went with GE because I found them for a few bucks cheaper than the Cree and the specs were nearly identical. Next I need to find 6 LED candle style for the living room ceiling fan and bedroom ceiling fan. That will probably be it, since we don't use the other rooms much. I figured it will take about a year for them to pay for themselves at $7.50 each.

Sooo, LED prices are getting cheaper every year. I bought a pack of 8.5W LED A19 bulbs with medium bases (i.e. standard sized light bulb) at Home Depot for $7/4pack. The light output is 800 lumens for 8.5W which is incredible efficiency. That will be like $5/year savings per bulb, so they pay for themselves in a few months.

My living room and bedroom only have overhead fan assemblies as the switchable light source, and they use the small candelabra bases, and LEDs really suck in this size with any substantial light output. So I rewired our ceiling fan to the usual 'medium base' light bulb sockets instead of the mini candelabra ($3/socket at menards with pigtail), and plugged in these crazy bright LED A19 bulbs. They look decent in the fan, and have WAY more light output for the same wattage as my old LED candelabra lights. It's by far one of the best $15 investments (bulbs and sockets total) I've ever made in the house, plus I can reuse the candelabra lights elsewhere now. And the CRI is awesome compared to the cheapo LEDs I bought off amazon from china, our living room felt dreary with those daylight LED bulbs before, it's amazing how much difference the CRI makes.

Any rate, I totally recommend the Phillips LED A19 bulbs on sale at Home Depot for $7 for 4pack. By far the cheapest LED bulbs I've seen and so far love the quality. (I have no stock in Home Depot, just trying to pass on a good deal to others).

[A//// Guy]

Nice! I plan on setting up some home automation this year too, pretty nifty stuff. I was looking to use this hardware/software. http://mobilincstore.com/ http://www.insteon.com/

[turbotalon1g]

Some peemp stuff, raspberry pi ftw!!!

Our house was pretty much turnkey, just organizing the garage a bit so I can start working on the car.

[rose0529]

that garage door stuff is awesome. Nice work dude