Many of you will be coming here after reading my article on home automation, “The Digital Domicile,” which appeared in the June issue of Maximum PC. Welcome! I hope you enjoyed the story, and that you want to learn more about the topic.

When I set about building a new house last year, I took advantage of the opportunity to include infrastructure that would make for the ultimate real-world test lab for many of the products on my beat list here at Maximum PC (the illustration in the aforementioned story is loosely based on my home’s floor plan). I still benchmark videocards in the official Maximum PC Lab in our office in South San Francisco, but I test wireless networking products, speakers, media-streaming devices, iPod docks, home-automation, and home-theater related products at the house, which we’ve dubbed Maximum PC Lab North.

The house is located in a rural area of Northern California on 10 acres of what was once a dairy farm, which has its ups and downs. On the upside, my neighbors are so far away that I don’t need to worry about their Wi-Fi equipment stomping on any of the wireless products I’m testing. In fact, no one was even running a wireless network when I first moved in; I’ve since detected weak signals from two nearby networks. On the downside, it’s a three-hour commute from home to the office. Obviously, I can’t do that commute every day, so I live part time in an apartment closer to the office.

I wrote this story as a companion piece to “The Digital Domicile;” to share with you some of my hands-on experience with the latest home-automation technology, and to document the environment in which many of my product reviews will be conducted. I’ll also point out some of the mistakes I made during the planning and construction of the new house, so you can avoid falling into the same traps should you decide to make changes to your own house.

The home isn't meant to be a showcase of the absolutely every piece of whiz-bang technology available today. As much as I enjoy reading those types of stories, I didn't have the budget to go over the top. My aim was to include practical home-automation technology and to build a house that could serve as a home as well as a lab. I hope you’ll use the comments tool to give me some feedback on what else you’d like to see in Maximum PC’s home-automation and home-theater coverage, whether that be more product reviews, more how- to’s, or whatever else you’re interested in.

I also want to give credit to the team that built the house: Luke Alexander, of Luke Alexander Construction was the general contractor; Scott Jackson, of Evergreen Development was the architect, did the lighting design, and installed the solar system; John Patterson of Patterson Electric performed the electrical work and installed the Z-Wave products; Allen Wilson of Premier Telecom Systems installed the Ethernet, coax, speaker, and telephone systems; and Greg Amaral, of Amaral Construction, designed, built, and installed the custom cabinetry.

Contents:

Page 1: Introduction 

Page 2: The Media Room

Page 3: The Media Room: Wiring and Video

Page 4: The Media Room: Audio

Page 5: The Home Office and the Home Run

Page 6: The Kitchen and the Video Surveillance System

Page 7: The Garage

Page 8: The Solar Power System

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