 |
December's meeting was a propeller-head homeowner's wet dream.
-
Gary Koenig, an IT consultant for McStain Homes, wanted to talk about all
the stuff mentioned in the announcement, but in fact only had time to talk
about wiring and home automation with X10 because the audience had so many
questions and stories of their own.
Gary's slides are available.
-
Jim Elliott, who built his own automated home, had the audience in awe of
his wiring and C++ code that controls his lights, heating and sprinklers.
When the house needs to be re-booted, as it often did before he grounded
his chimney, he inserts a floppy disk into his 25 MHz PC with an
Intel 386 processor.
His low-voltage wiring needs a little tidying, and will hopefully
be pictured in his presentation materials.
Jim's slides are available.
The audience was participating with rapt attention, right up to the
last ridiculous question: "Besides this stuff being pretty cool,
why would you actually want to do it?"
Then we then got thrown out of the room for running overtime.
Those FRUUG members who couldn't get enough met Gary Koenig
at one of McStain's "Smart" model homes on January 19, 2002.
Quite a few people showed up to gape at bundles of wire, X10
lighting controls, a Linux-based home server,
and an entertainment system housed
in the basement instead of with the TV in the living room
(all controlled by an IR/remote). There were lots of questions,
and Gary rattled off a list of
contacts and URLs that people might find
useful... so here they are (e-mail addresses changed slightly
to deter spammers):
-
Fixed wireless networks:
Mesa Networks
Todd Bergstrom
303-279-3143
todd at mesanetworks.net
-
Residential Gateway:
Web Mountain
Terry Bolinger
303-627-1856
tbolinger at webmtn.com
-
Low Voltage Vendors:
United Systems
Tom Whicker
303-778-7000
twhicker at unitedsyscom.com
-
Home Sync
Dave Tschetter
dtschetter at gohomesync.com
-
Home Tech at McStain:
Andy Makely
303-494-5900
amm at mcstain.com
-
Some interesting URLs:
www.smarthome.com
www.worthdist.com
www.remotecentral.com
www.hometoys.com
www.futurehomesystems.com
Gary has left McStain and will be taking some time off;
after a bit he'll be at glk at ironmuscle.com.
|
 |
