Another custom switch-plate

The client had originally had in mind a NetStreams-based system, and had a number of US style double j-boxes at switch level with a pair of Cat5 cables in each.  

He wanted to cover them up with something nice, with the option of using the existing cables to add some simple control to his Control4 system.  We were tasked with creating something that had the look and feel of one of these light switches:

These are sold by Forbes and Lomax in the UK, http://www.forbesandlomax.com/ from their Unlaquered Brass range of faceplates.  Luckily for us they can make any custom plate to order....

Samuel used Visio to create the technical drawing, and from there it took Forbes and Lomax about 3 weeks to make.

We added some heavy duty toggle switches from CPC, and it was setup just like the previous custom plate post, soldered to a small length of Cat5 and wired back to a Control 4 I/O Extender.

The client can flip a switch to turn the room on to his favourite channel, turn on the lights, open the front drive electronic gates, or start an audio playlist.  

With Control 4's Composer Home Edition and a bit of training, he can now alter the programming to suit whatever he wants - a different channel, light level, playlist etc.  Apologies for the quality of the photos by the way.

RIP Mini-touch screen

Recently one of our clients asked us to upgrade his old Control4 Mini-Touch screen for the latest model, the Infinity Edge.  Here's how to fit the new model in place of the poor old slightly yellowing but still functional touchpanel.

The old one. Not much screen, too much plastic.  And that volume dial is turning yellow.  Errgh!

Yeah, it's not much better looking under the hood.  They were fitted with a small speaker and I think even a microphone, but unfortunately these were never activated.
The new ones have full intercom though, and it works really well so ideal for a large house, especially when you need to tell the kids to get off the X-box and come down for dinner!

Right, so this is still the old panel.  Note the audio outputs on the back - they were useful if you needed to use another audio stream into the system, just had to remember to run extra cables to get the audio back to the amp!  The new ones also have these.
The previous installers had run two Cat5's and a power flex, just to be on the safe side, although you can run these touchpanels on a single Cat5 and power them over the Ethernet jack with a POE switch or injector.  I find its much better than using mains as some of the panels can get quite hot due to the transformer sitting on the back of the unit.

This is the adapter plate needed if you are going to use the old backbox.  It's a neat one-piece solution and makes the process very fast.  Just two screws to fit it to the old backbox and we're nearly there.

You can't really tell due to my bad photo but this the new touchpanel connection unit.  It's got an RJ45 jack on the back for data and POE, as well as the usual mains flex for local mains connection if no POE available.
It fits perfectly into the space, and takes two screws to fix into place.

And here's the new panel.

Loading - always a good sign. 
The new panel sits perfectly on the metal frame, allowing some space for the built-in speaker and mic used for the intercom.  Magnets hold the screen to the connection unit, and there is an option to use security tabs to make it difficult for somebody to walk off with one.

And here we are.  It took me about 20 minutes in total, including faffing about with the iPhone and tidying up afterwards.
This touchpanel can be used to browse digital music, movies, TV channels, radio stations, control lighting systems, CCTV cameras, view your photos as screensavers, intercom, set alarm clocks, security alarms, heating, air con, downloadable apps, it goes on and on.

Blogger fail

Just in case you're wondering, I stupidly deleted most of this blog, so have spent over an hour reposting my previous posts, via cached pages, saved images etc etc.  What a pain!


  

Multi-room Audio and TV Distribution

We were called to help the Jones with their AV at this wonderful house.  The huge Living room had previously been fitted out with a Crestron cinema system but this was ripped out before they moved in.  The brief was simple—Give us music in each room, install our existing hi-fi, wall-mount the Kitchen and Kids TV’s, and remove anything we no longer need.

When the family started renovations they discovered a mess of AV and data cables and it our job to simplify and trim up all these loose ends ready for the new equipment.  We then installed a new Sonos system in the headend to feed into the existing Systemline speakers dotted around the home, together with a network hard-drive to stream all the families iTunes music.

We installed the clients Arcam 2-channel hi-fi in the impressive Living room and integrated it into the Sonos system, so that they could listen to their old records through the Sonos in the rest of the house.

The clients are really pleased with the results, and Mr Jones had this to say about the project:

“Having bought a house with a lot of technology we didn't really understand we called in Limelight after a personal recommendation.  Within a day they had come round, specced the job, and explained what we had and what we could do. Within another day I had a very competitive quote for all the various tweaks we could make, neatly explained and detailed, and was able to pick and choose the bits we wanted to go ahead with.

Adam and Sam were both efficient and helpful and we barely noticed them being there. They were mindful to make sure that we were properly wired up for any future amendments as well so we can upgrade or change things in the future.

Having been clueless as to what a lot of our systems were, Limelight both explained it all and neatly labelled each switch, drive, and wire so we will always have a record of what does what.

Limelight made every effort to be with us as soon as they could when we decided to change things and, being a team, there was always someone familiar with the job to talk to if one of the guys was otherwise occupied.

Limelight came up with many suggestions and options to tailor make the job to our requirements….it couldn't have been easier…they made it a great fun experience."

Equipment List

Lutron Homeworks 4-Series

Systemline Modular HPM16 for 3 rooms

Sonos ZP90’s x 2

Sonos ZP120 x 1

Buffalo Linkstation hard drive 

Monitor Audio R45HD’s

Arcam A18 Amplifier 

Arcam CD37 CD player

Arcam T32 Tuner

Project Turntable
Kef floorstanding speakers

Custom switch-plate

The problem: 

8 zone Control4-based video and audio system at a Golf Club needs basic AV control in three rooms.  Must be able to turn TV on from the wall and select from three sources and change channel, must be reliable, must be simple to use and tamper-proof.  

I think I should explain the last point a little - We've installed a few Control 4 touch-screens in other areas at this project but only in the staff areas.  The new controls need to be located in rooms open to members of the public, and a drawback of using C4 touch-screens is that you cannot lock them down to only control certain areas, as far as I know.  We don't want AC/DC suddenly blasting out of the ceiling speakers in the Restaurant because a tipsy wedding party guest in the Function room is fiddling with the audio zone controls!

 

So, we came up with the idea of making a metal plate up, fitted with some momentary push-button switches.  
//Edit: I should add that each push-button would, when pushed, send a signal that the Control4 processor could react to.  Typically the programming would be something relatively simple like "When button 1 is pressed, Select Sky Sports 1 in the Members Lounge".


The cables in the back-boxes were terminated with RJ45's, so all we had to do was make the plates up, solder an RJ45 lead to the contacts, and plug in.  The other side of the cable is connected into a series of Control I/O Extender contact ports.

Shopping list:

1 x Aluminium plate - Designed by Samuel Howarth, machined by LS Fabrications - measured up to fit over a C4Infinity Edge back-box

6 x Push-button switches by Knitter, from RS Components

1 x RJ45 patch lead - stranded for better flexibility

1 x RJ45 coupler

First I made up the plate - the buttons were too big for the original holes so I had to drill them about 2mm wider - luckily it was Aluminium so soft as butter.

My work area consisted of a metal bits box with me sitting on the floor.  I was up against the clock so no time for luxuries.

After hunting around for a soldering iron (cheers Ash) it was time to tin up the end of the RJ45 patch lead. 

Then tin up both ends of some short 2.5" sections of stranded Cat5.  These will bridge all the common terminals of the switches.

Then label up the back of the plate, so it all makes sense when soldering each Cat5 colour to a switch terminal.  As you can see I didn't think of this until I'd started soldering.

Finished soldering.  Apologies for the photos btw, that'll be the iPhone 3g's fault.  I had to push the Cat5 flat when I brought it to the wall as the coupler got in the way - easier because it was stranded cable.

 We got the fabricators to make the mounting holes counter-sunk so the screws sat flat on the plate.

The finished plate.  I was quite happy with it, its quite utilitarian and as it's not labelled, a little bit mysterious.  Once the client knows what they want each button to do, we'll order some more and get them engraved by LS.

The programming was kept simple - 

Button 1 - Sky Sports 1

Button 2 - Central Blu-ray player

Button 3 - Local floorbox input 

Button 4 - Room Off

Button 5 - Sky channel up

Button 6 - Sky channel down

I'm going to add a bit more programming when we go back, but that should get the rooms up and running.  The clients staff all have iPhones with the C4 app running, and there are a few touchscreens dotted around for greater control. And yes, I know it's not straight!

It sits quite well on the wall for the first attempt.

She's down but not out

Someone decided to crash into us yesterday, so the van's got some damage as you can see.

The morale of the story is, don't trust anyone on the road, wear a seatbelt at all times, and RAC/Barclaycard return-to-address cover doesn't apply if you have sign-writing on the vehicle!

Control 4 and Sonos Integration

How do you integrate over 200 gigabytes of CD's into a music system? That was the challenge at this fantastic house in Notting Hill. 

The client already had a Control4 system installed to control his TVs, amps and source equipment, but due to the unusually large size of the music library we advised him to also install a Sonos music system to help keep tabs on all those songs.  

Here's a sample screen-shot of the Extra Vegetables Sonos driver working on a Control4 graphical user interface.  The driver itself is based around the original Control4 Ipod driver and is pretty simple to use.  I would always advise using a C4 HC1000 processor with these drivers, as they have the horsepower to deal with large media databases.

In the Lounge the client also wanted to listen to music - unfortunately there were no speaker cables pre-wired.  Luckily, we found a Cat5 data cable on the back wall we could use so installed a Sonos ZP120 amp by the sofa with a small pair of speakers.  This worked great - until we realised the ZP120 wouldn't fit under the sofa out of the kid's way, so we swapped it out for a ZP90 pre-amp and a small stand-alone amplifier.





In the Library there's a great little Rotel hi-fi system in here driving some Kef bookshelf speakers, so the client can listen to his Cd's or playback his digital music via another ZP90, all controlled from a Control4 HC200 room processor.











After selling and installing so many systems dealing with MP3's etc, playing original Cd's through the Rotel felt positively old school.  How far we've come in such a short amount of time!

And here's where everything is controlled from: A small Middle Atlantic rack housing the following equipment:

Control4 HC1000

Control4 HC300
Control4 HC200

Control4 Speakerpoint

Sky HD

Pioneer AV Receiver

Pioneer Blu-ray
Sonos ZP90
APC UPS
Q-Nap Network hard drive
Cisco 24-port gigabit ethernet switch

Upgrading and Improving

We were contacted by a client who wasn't happy with his Control4 system, installed by another AV company.  He asked if we could pay him a visit to take a look at his setup and come up with some options to improve it where possible.  He also wanted to control the system from his Ipad if possible.

As you can see from these photos, the Cinema room design looks (and sounds) great, with a fantastic Pioneer plasma in a 7.1 arrangement. Those front speakers are the Kef Ci9000ACE range.  

There are three at the front, two for the surround rear channels and two HTS9001's for the surround sides.  I must admit that after testing the system out with 'The Dark Knight' on Blu-ray it was a real struggle to get back to work! 

There were ceiling speakers in each bedroom on the first floor, driven by a Control4 audio amplifier back in the rack.  There was also a Netgear EVA8000 media player, a Sony AV receiver for the Cinema room, Sky HD and a Samsung CCTV recorder.

We did find a number of issues that needed to be resolved:

1. The speed and performance of the Control4 system was unacceptable for what the client wanted it to do, and the firmware needed a few updates to get it to work with the latest equipment.
2. The HDMI signal to the plasma screen was occasionally cutting in and out.
3. The wireless Control4 touchscreen wasn't working.
4. The music management wasn't working.
5. The movie playback wasn't working either!
6. There was no UPS or power management in the head-end rack to protect the equipment, just a mess of white plastic power strips and cables galore.
7. The rack cabling was really messy at the back, and needed some attention.
8. There was very poor wi-fi coverage throughout the house.
9. The old Control4 mini-touch screen wasn't going to cut the mustard with the new Control4 software, so it needed to be changed for the latest model.  See here for how we did this: http://limelightautomation.blogspot.com/2011/08/rip-mini-touch-screen.html

Our proposed upgrades and improvements were accepted by the client straight away so we got started.

Firstly, we upgraded the Control4 processor to an HC1000.  A system this size, with eight rooms of audio and plenty of media management needs the fastest processor to keep it all running smoothly.

We then swapped out the old Netgear POE switch hanging on the back of the rack for a simple Cisco small business ethernet switch mounted on the front, and installed a simple POE injector for the new in-wall touchscreen.

The EVA8000 was exchanged for a Dune HD Duo, a nifty new media player that we also equipped with 4 terabytes of internal hard-disk space, so the client could browse his digital movie collection with ease.

We also installed an APC UPS at the bottom of the rack, to protect the expensive AV equipment from mains spikes and surges, and keep the system running in the event of power failure.

The HDMI-over-Cat5 sender behind the plasma screen was swapped out for a much better version from Vision HD, and the original Sky HD box had developed a fault and was upgraded for a Sky HD 1TB model.

We installed a couple of Apple Airport Express wireless extenders to improve the wi-fi, and added the Control4 MyHome app to the clients Ipad so he could control the whole house AV with it from anywhere inside the house.

The rack got a good tidy up - power cables were shortened, old  and unused cables were removed or replaced, various missing screws were replaced, and the shelves were spaced out a bit more to allow the equipment a touch more ventilation.

All in all the project was a great success.  The client was very happy with what we did, and has not reported any problems, touch wood.

The client had this to say to our Control4 rep:

"Dear Hamish, thank you for putting me in touch with the guys at Limelight Automation.

Finally, I have the Control4 system that I expected.

Adam and Sam were extremely knowledgeable and polite.  Our Control4 system now works smoothly, and they explained all the features and functions perfectly.
I would suggest that, if anyone wants to have a Control4 system, then call Limelight Automation".