The Quarky Engineer

For the house wide audio, intercom, door and gate communications I decided to give HTD a run. They have a great integrated solution that is end user installed and configured, no cloud resources needed, and just enough zones to make it work in the new house. I’ll have 12 zones driving 46 speakers with 14 in wall touch pads.

In a number of locations around the house I will have the wall mounted touch panels that gives you access to music/sound for all zones, plus intercom, front door and gate access, and access paging. All of these functions can also be done from an app on various ipads laying around the house.

When I did the wiring I ran each room speaker wires to a wall box location, and from there back to the media closet along with a cat6. The touch pad uses the cat 6, and the speaker wire path allows me to add local analog volume controls in places I might not put a touch pad.

The only gotcha is the gate control stuff, which I will have to do some ‘enhancements’ to give the distance to the gate. More on that as I dig into it.

Floor tiles in the shop partially done. I still need to do the pieces near the lift posts that need some close cuts.

Lower garage is next. Slightly different color pattern there.

I also need to paint the concrete and get some cool stuff up on the walls.

New TV to replace the old Plasma. I really liked the plasma, but I hear these LG OLED 4Ks are pretty nice.

At least my new office has become usable. I’m awaiting the arrival of the VESA mounts for the wall, and I have 6 Planar monitors ready to mount.

I did get a small Microtik 4xSFP+ 10g switch that works well under the desk so everything is 10gig. For the 5k iMac I had to get a thunderbolt 3 10 gig interface, but it works well.

The 6 upper displays will be driven by servers in my server room, so I also need to get the HDMI over fiber devices installed.

I managed to get my 08 STI from the old house today. It has no engine ( the billet one is on the stand ready to go in). Fortunately I arranged things such that I could park my enclosed trailer down from my current shop, and once at the new house park above the currents shop so gravity could be my friend.

In place ready for the engine install.

Looks like I can fit 6 cars in the lower garage , 5 in the upper, and probably 4 in the shop. This is good.

10 days away from moving in.. still some paint work left to do, and lots and lots of landscaping.

The final floor coating was done inside on Friday, so it should be good to walk on tomorrow.

We also have our gate installed, and the upper deck has the glass railings installed thanks to Scott Rowland!

New dining room light fixture as well, which looks kinda cool!

All of the cool kids have RGB server rooms at home.