Home Project

[destructaball]

I am planning to upgrade my house. I live in the UK and at the moment I have two desktop computers at the moment, they have roughly 500MB RAM each and modest proccesors. I like the gnome layout and preferably wireless networking. I can build computers and electronic systems but I am fairly new to Linux. Most important I have a near limitless budget but I don't want to spend more than I have to if you get my drift.

I really need suggestions for what I should do both hardware and software wise. It doesn't matter how exotic it is any idea is a good idea and go into as much depth as possible.

It would be useful to have a wireless network that can stream videos in real-time between every machine and lots of storage. Thanks in advanced.

Most important thing is wherever possible it has to be on Ubuntu cause ubuntu rocks

[popch]

I am planning to upgrade my house. (...)
I really need suggestions for what I should do both hardware and software wise. It doesn't matter how exotic it is any idea is a good idea and go into as much depth as possible.

There are power strips with integrated network interfaces. They allow you to switch appliances on and off through your LAN. They are normally used in data centres or for controlling off site servers. Place some of those outlets into each room.


Most important I have a near limitless budget but I don't want to spend more than I have to if you get my drift.

drool.

[Daveski]

Have you thought about MythTV? http://www.mythtv.org/

or you could have an awesome internal telephone system: http://www.asterisk.org/

[Iceni]

Look into X10 type hardware. This can be controlled from your computer and in turn control every power-using utility in your home.

For example you can carry a small chip somewhere on you and lights will turn on and off according to where you are in your house. You can send a message to your computer with your cell or from another computer to heat up a certain part of your house befor you go home,etc.

I would like to help more, but truth to be told I only know it exists and have a vague idea of the possibilities.

[Hortinstein]

yeah i would love to do some x11 stuff, and wish i had a near limitless budget...get kind of controller for it all that supports SSH and write some scripts to control it all off a phone or PDA. That would all be pretty easy once you get the hang of the hardware

[Daveski]

Look into X10 type hardware. This can be controlled from your computer and in turn control every power-using utility in your home.

I have some X10 equipment at home. For a UK supplier, check out http://www.letsautomate.com/index.cfm?&Nav=X10&URLCaller=HA