Tobes

So Rob and I were joking about sharing a flat together. Then the joke got serious. It got us thinking about geeky stuff. Rob loves Apple and I love all things Open Source. So it’s hard to pick things but it does make for fun conversation.

My ideal home would probably be something like this:

I have yet to find a Media Center client I like other than Windows Media Center. XBMC does work well and so does Plex. However Plex is very Applecentric at the moment and they also need thin clients to run. With my Xbox 360 there is no need for a thin client in my bedroom. I also have a AV Amp which would be nice to use with my speakers in the living room. This could be connected to a client with serial for complete control. But again… LinuxMCE supports this but does anything else?

The server would probably be hidden away. I don’t really know what the server would consist of. I suppose it could just be a tower PC running linux or Windows. However I also want a NAS box. Something which can be controlled outside a network to download torrents, access media and take backups of devices. But then I guess any server would be capable of doing these things. I think I just don’t like the idea of a tower PC which is just doing basic stuff, but then there are rack-mount servers…

I like the idea of security. We obviously have a lot of equipment that while it doesn’t matter if it get’s stolen (backups!), we will want to ruin the persons life. So CCTV sounds good. But then you need to know where to draw the line. What if one of us was having sex in the living room?!?! IPTV cameras are expensive. But there’s nothing stopping you from just plugging a webcam into a server via USB. Need to look into free software and intrusion detection. I was thinking about a cam doorbell and then I thought what if we were both in bed on a Saturday morning and someone rings. We are not near the living room to see the screen but we both have smart phones. Wouldn’t it be cool for there to be app which pops up with the feed or even a snapshot and streaming audio/voice! No need to get up to tell the Post woman you will not be showing her a good time today.

I like the idea of lighting/blind control. But don’t really see the point. In a bigger house maybe but otherwise it’s getting complicated for no reason.

The doorbell would have to play something geeky. Haven’t thought of anything yet. Saying that it would probably change every 2 weeks anyway lol.

I realise I missed out Google TV. Haven’t seen any hardware I like yet and while I love testing things I think it needs to mature a bit yet.

We don’t need anything to rip cds/dvds. This media is dead to me. (Yet Vinyl isn’t LOL)

I wouldn’t mind some sort of audio thin client in every room so that DAB radio and my personal library could be played everywhere. Shower, kitchen when cooking etc.

Have I missed something?

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