Items Tagged With tutorials

Fancy automating your curtains / drapes? What about having them close at dusk each day, or perhaps having them open automatically at a certain time each morning.  Having the ability to open and close your curtains can be a serious deterrant against break-ins whilst you're away from your property too.  Along with a slightly randomised replay of your normal daily lighting routine it gives a house a very convincing lived in look...

Many years ago I discovered the Automated Home site, and within it was the Node Zero gallery. The projects in that gallery inspired me to build my own. The opportunity came up when moving into my current home - an old semi-detached house needing a little work. There was a period of several weeks between owning the house and moving in that meant that I could go crazy with installing cables without anything getting in the way...

Automated Home reader and gadget junkie Quinten Uijldert has just rebuilt his Node Zero (thats his wiring cupboard for the uninitiated).  Check out his article on building a budget custom DIY rack for all his gear...

We’ve had our Sonos setup for nearly three years now and it continues to be a joy to own and use.  Our original setup of 2 x ZP100s (the zone players with built in amplifiers) was recently added to with a third un-amp’d ZP80.  The new ZonePlayer was swapped for the ZP100 in the AV room where amplification was not required as it was already plugged into our home cinema system.  So the plan was to utilise the now spare ZP100 as a zone in the en-suite bathroom off our main bedroom...

Why automate your lights? Well, to be honest, most of my house is automated, so it seemed the obvious thing to do. There are lots of benefits in automating parts of your house, lighting in particular just makes life easier, lights coming on when you walk into a room is better than switching them on yourself! ....and because they turn themselves on, they turn themselves off too, so you can't forget...