Hi all,
New to home automation, new to running wires and feel a little lost. My home is 3 levels - basement, main and second floors. An older house, fully finished. I removed a few pot lights and cut a few holes to run some cables but find the task of running multiple wires very challenging due to walls not lining up between floors and a multitude of various poorly organized wires and ducts/pipes everywhere.
I found a way to run a couple of CAT6a cables from the basement to the main floor and a couple to the second floor, but I can't imagine running multiple speaker or coaxial wires between floors. The space where I found I could run them between the floors is very tight, if I wanted to run more I'd be Swiss-cheesing the boards and that's not something I would want to do.
Anyway, I read the article on structured wiring but I am not sure I fully understand the requirements, or that all the requirements apply to my situation.
For example, the article says to run speaker wires to every room where you want to play music, and 2x coaxial cable, along with 2x network cable. This is, as I mentioned above, a challenge. The coax cable is not even necessary as we don't have cable and watch IPTV.
Now, about the speaker wires. I can run them to some central location on each floor, like kitchen and dining room speaker wires would go to the family room where my entertainments center is located. Same goes for the basement and the upper level.
That said, is my wiring plan going to allow me to control devices anywhere in the house? I am OK with three controllers, EA-1 or EA-3 one per floor I suppose. How will they connect and talk to each other? Zigbee? Or should they be hard-wired to each other?
For streaming music, what configuration would be most cost effective in my case? Do I need to run any additional wiring to accommodate this?
I hope this makes sense. Thanks in advance.