Home automation newbie & cat7

[Jamiehop]

Hi there,

I'm new to the forum and a home automation virgin...... Hello!

I'm in the process of buying a new house that was built 3 years ago and has been wired with cat 7 cables. Up until now I was completely oblivious to home automation and had never heard of cat 7 before. But a few Google searches later and I'm a little more informed but still need some help with next steps. So hopefully someone on this forum can point me in the right direction?

The house has 2 cat7 cables to every room as far as I can make out, all of which terminate in a "node zero" in a downstairs cupboard. However, there is no distribution unit(?), no face plates in the rooms or any connectors. There's also a hd satellite feed (2 coax) and a bt socket in the node 0. It also appears the house alarm is all wired to this point too (again, separate 6 core cables are all routed here but not connected to anything).

So, my questions (finally I hear you say!)....
- what "distribution unit" do I need? I've read some stuff about baluns and other components. Can I just get away with one "unit" (whatever that may be?)? Or is it more than this?
- can I run phone, Internet and sky hd thru the two Cat 7 cables? Or do kneed one cable for each of the sky feeds? Or one cable for sky hd and one for phone & data?
- finally what connectors/face plates do I need? I suppose the face plates depend on the answer to the question above?

I have seen three way splitters to split phone data and tv from one wall socket... So is this the best way to go?

Apologies for the lengthy post and for the millions of questions but I really am a novice on this but a quick learner! So any help or advice would be hugely appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Jamie

[Otto-Mate]

Welcome Jamie.

First of all you can relax in the knowledge that the difficult bit (wire in the walls) is done.

Have a look through the Wiring Guide...

http://www.wordpress-1219309-4387497.cloudwaysapps.com/Content/Wiring-Guide.html

And the Node 0 gallery...

http://www.wordpress-1219309-4387497.cloudwaysapps.com/Content/NodeZero-Gallery.html

You need to decide what you want from here on in. Do you want to distribute your Satellite/Cable TV to all rooms for example? If so do you need HDMI/HD or is analogue RF OK? Do you want an Ethernet point in each room or is Wi-Fi enough?

Once you have a spec of what you need you can look at the DIY thing or look for a local smart home company to finish off the installation for you - http://www.wordpress-1219309-4387497...om/Installers/

M.

[Jamiehop]

Thanks for the quick reply.

I'd already read the very comprehensive wiring article which did help.

I plan on running an HD satellite signal to at least 2 rooms and possibly sky+ to two further bedrooms. I also planned running a phone line to two rooms and potentially Ethernet to most if not all rooms. Although I currently use a wireless router, given the size of the house and distance from the exchange I'd probably be better running a wired network for things like the xbox and the office pc.

I'll have a good look at the node 0 gallery and links to give me more of an idea about next steps.

I've also just purchased this CCTV system and plan to install it in the new house:

http://www.saverstore.com:80/product/20042996/CnM-4-Channel-H264-DVR-500GB--Kit-with-4x-CCD-Cameras

More thoughts/questions I have:
- do I put the hd stb in node 0 or get an individual stb for each room where required? The former is obviously neater but I'm guessing you can't watch different channels on diff tv's at the same time?

- if I do go with the stb in node 0, can anyone recommend any good ir systems?

- I'm guessing I need a "patch panel" to terminate all the cat 7 cables? And maybe a switch for the phones/Internet? Anything else I've missed?

- the last major point for me is to still understand how many services can be piped thru one cat 7 cable? Is it one service per cable or many to one?

Thanks for the pointers so far
Jamie