Here are some pics of the final product (read on for pics and more)

Here we see a closeup of my telco box. The telephone comes in from the left, the ethernet comes in through the bottom left, the gigabit switch comes in from the top and the IR comes in through the bottom center.

The telco punches down into the distribution block on the left. This will allow me to run multiple lines into the house if I ever need to. Each room receives 6 wires of IR and 2 wires of telco (8 wires == 1 Cat5 cable) so I bridge the 2 telco wires over to the center punchdown so that they then trickle back out to each room on the green Cat5.

On the right is my IR distribution amp. From the center punchdown 3 wires (IR send) come out on the far right and bridge over to the input on the amp. The output of the amp comes back over to the center punchdown on 3 other wires.

Each room has a green Cat5 that connects to the center block and thus gets 6 wires of IR (send/recieve) and 2 wires of phone (1 phone line). Its pretty elegant and works incredibly well.

Here is a farther out view of my rack. On the right you can see the autopatch and my media pc wall racked to save space. A lot of cables are still not stowed to my satisfaction but they will eventually get to where I need them to be.

I had 3 primary goals.

1) Clean up the darn mess
2) Convert from Composite video/analog audio to Component video and Digital Audio
3) Relocate my components into the rack to increase overall space.

It ended up pretty nice I think. I still have a ways to go with some loose wires and need to rewire my power so that I don’t need all those surge suppressors plugged into a 20Amp circuit but its nice for now.

Interesting though was that I got to keep my analog audio channels (Cat5e) and run the digi audio next to it (RG-6). This lets me push analog audio (via a rack mounted DAC) to non-digital audio devices and digital audio to devices that can handle it locally. Its a great deal of flexibility and I’m really happy with it.

So for example, the output to my office outputs Component video and two channels of analog audio since I do not have a tuner. The analog audio originates in the garage from a small DAC that accepts the digital audio signal from my switcher.

Now, at the same time my family room does accept digital audio into a local DAC that then splits analog line level to my TV and my Tuner. Eventually I will eliminate the DAC, go straight to the tuner and then connect the tuner pre-amp output to my TV.

One annoying thing I did have to do was buy a line-doubler for my Tivo. I have an older DirecTivo that only outputs Composite or SVideo. The line doubler takes that 480i signal, upconverts it to 480p and outputs it as component video for input into the autopatch. Thats the way it is until the series 3 Tivo comes out and we can all finally upgrade.. My Media PC outputs HD natively (component) as does my DVD player (progressive scan) so I only needed one of these magic boxes. You can see it in the rack picture sitting on top of the tivo.

Overall, same great switching capability with sidebyside analog and digital audio and its working well. Except for the fact that all my standalone DAC’s are built for CD Players and thus can not accept a 5.1 signal but thats an issue for another day..

Oh! I also installed some great custom cables from Blue Jeans Cables. They are 5 foot long bundled cables that carry RGB and Digital Audio in color coded cables and end caps. The terminating ends are BNC for the autopatch and the other ends are RCA for the rack. Great quality, great build and it keeps things clean. Expensive but well-priced at $60/cable or so. I highly recommend them and they will build most anything for reasonable pricing. For example, the cable I got was originally RGBV (cable strain relief color: Red, Green, Blue and White I think) but they built, for the same price, Red, Green Blue and Orange for me so that it makes sense for my config. Everything they do is build to order so its pretty flexible and they are a solid company.

In order to make my switching system ‘Wife Compatible’ (verified) I had to devise a simple and bulletproof method of managing it. At first it was a web portal but I realized fairly quickly that not only did it have to be simple, it also had to be in context and unfortunately browsing a website while trying to control the TV is not in context for most people.

What is in context? Why a remote control of course.

Read on for the full scoop..

My Pronto

After surveying what my options were I pretty much settled on the pronto controllers. They are cheap, easy to get and very flexible. In general I hate touchscreen remotes, I’m too tactile for them, but in this case it fit the bill perfectly.

I gave it some hard thought and realized that essentially each switching configuration comes down to a two item combination, Place and Task. Once you know both of these you can tell the switching system to make the change. For example, in ‘AutoPatchese’ switching input 3 (Tivo ) to Output 2 ( Office ) is the command ‘CI3O2T’ ( Change Input 3 to Output 2 Take ). Easy enough, now its just a matter of navigating the screens in a way that makes sense.

If I am trying to watch something on TV the first fact I have is that I know where I am. Since I know where I am I can tell the Pronto Remote where I am and this is precisely what my ‘Home Page’ on the remote does.Each room of the house is represented on this screen (granted I don’t have a very big house!). I originally toyed with the idea of actually have a blueprint of the house represented on the screen but I never could get it to look quite right and in the end this format was a lot easier to comprehend and adjust to.

Once my location is determined the Pronto loads the associated device list that is available for that room. In my case every device is available in every room although this is by no means a requirement. I just create a file that has a button for each component in my system. The catch here is that even though the bitmaps are identical the actual file is unique per room because I have to transmit a unique I.R. code to identify each combination.When pressed this I.R. code is transmitted, received by Girder and then Girder issues the appropriate switching command ( ex:CI3O2T )

As a nicety I then switch the Pronto to the control map for that component. No one ever uses this, they just pick up the actual Tivo remote and get to work.But its a nice touch and always draws a smile.

How do I get my I.R. codes? Luckily the Pronto ships with a huge library of pre-determined I.R. codes and thanks to some wierd derivative of Moore’s law most of these I.R. codes are assigned to equipment long obsoleted by the march of technology. My personal favorites are early LaserDisc codes. Something like ‘Stop’ on Pioneer LaserDisc player ends up representing the switch of my Media PC to the Living Room.

I.R. Distribution

This code is beamed into my I.R. switching system that is comprised of components from Xantech such as the DinkyLink reciever and a powered I.R. switch. Distributing I.R. is painfully simple, you just need 6 wires (3 pair in telco speak) and a standard Cat5 has 4 pair so that does nicely and leaves me a pair left over for POTS (Plain Ole Telephone Service). 3 wires are dedicated to send and 3 to receive.

You simply:

1. Wire your receive wires from the I.R. receiver to the related Cat5 wires
2. On the other side you drop those into the first 3 slots on a standard 6 pair telco distribution block.
3. On the other end of the telco distribution block you pass the signal into the I.R. repeater input for signal amplification. (this is now your reception bus).
4. On the I.R. repeater output you wire it BACK to the telco block but now on the other 3 slots. (This is now your transmit bus) .
5. Wire your I.R. emitters to the transmit bus. This includes both the other 3 cat 5 going BACK to your room of choice as well as a few I.R. emitters for your media closet to control your Tivo, DVD player, Media PC etc.
6. Wire the 3 transmit wires into your room local I.R. emitter if required. Usually not if you centralized your components.

This image shows Cat5 coming in from the rooms in my home (Green Cable) and entering the telephone distribution block (green circuit board that is long and rectangular). The blue cable on the end connects the 3 pairs (6 wires) to the black box on the right which is the amplified I.R. switch/repeater. The black wire coming out of the top of the repeater is my emitter and it actually loops down and back up to the small black block you see towards the bottom/center of the image. The orange/white wires coming out of that feed back into the Telco block for I.R. emission to the rooms. Here is a secret, you really only need TWO wires for I.R., the 3rd is ’signal’ to turn the red L.E.D. on when sending and receiving. Above this is the large POTS distribution block so that every room has a phone running on the same infrastructure. The nice thing about this is that if I ever get multiple lines I can wire them into the block and switch that particular room to the new line. Telco Lineman the world over are thanking me for not having to climb under my house ever again. Your Welcome!

This scheme allows you to basically shoot any remote at any TV in any room and have the I.R. output blasted to -all- other rooms *and* the Media closet.

In the Media Closet I have a USB-UIRT plugged into my Media PC as well as an MCE2005 remote receiver (to control my Media PC). The USB-UIRT picks up the Pronto codes via Girder and then Girder handles the heavy lifting of converting ‘Stop on a Pioneer Laserdisc’ to ‘CI2O3T’ via RS-232.

And thats how you control a whole house A/V switching system using I.R. Distribution and an old Pronto remote you got on ebay for $45. The next step is to build an I.R. switching appliance and get the $2000 media PC off of serial switching duty. This will make the system more bulletproof and actually allow me to make it useful to the homes next occupants (this is California and we generate wealth by moving every 3-5 years). It’ll also be a darn fun project that utilizes REST, Ruby on Rails and embedded linux but thats fodder for another article entirely..

• Idea 1.0: “Lets watch Tivo in the office so we can watch Survivor there.”
• Idea 1.5: “Why only watch Tivo in every single room, we should be able to watch ANYTHING in ANY room!”
• Idea 2000++ Service Pack 5: “Lets watch ANY source in 0 or more rooms and control it with an intutive user interface!”

And so was born our A/V Switching system. It consists of the following components.

Infrastructure

The first pre-requisite was structured cabling. At inception we would only be using Composite video and unbalanced audio signals but I knew that within a year or two, when our remodelling was complete, we’d be in a world where we wanted HDTV with component video and digital audio everywhere. Any infrastructure I put in place would have to be ‘future proof’. After poking around a bit I decided to run bundled cable rather then individual strands and I selected bundled Monster cable with 2 RG-6 and 2 Cat5e PER bundle. I also picked up some Cat6 for gigabit ethernet and ran two of those out as well. Each room would get 2 of these bundles.Thats a LOT of cable (4 RG-6, 4 Cat5e and 2 Cat6 PER ROOM) but it really means that this structured wiring is future proof for the most part barring any dramatic changes in technology that may occur. Yes, I could have gone cheaper with Belkin or some other cable but I got a screaming deal on my 1000′ of Monster cable. It also came on two huge spools and thats always fun.

I decided to terminate these wires into a system of Leviton QuickPort jacks. These things are fantastic, there is a QuickPort for everything and the systems modular nature met my requirements for overall system flexibility perfectly. Its a bit pricey but it was worth it to me.

I buy all my Leviton gear and tools at Tri-State Electronics via their webstore. They always deliver exactly what I ordered fairly quickly at super competitive prices. And everything is always in stock.

Switching Control

Now that I had the wiring figured out my attention turned to controlling what went over the wires. After a lot of research(ok, a few Google searches..) and some chats with friends in the A/V business I eventually selected the AutoPatch switching matrix. My friend is a real A/V nut, loves to tune his equipment and used to work in large scale A/V projects (stadiums and Disney World). In his words ‘It was a closed system, I mean it worked well but it was really to simple.’ Music to my ears, I LOVE simple!

Even better, its CHEAP! Yes, you heard me, CHEAP. It turns out that there is a huge aftermarket for this hardware on EBay . A side-effect of simplicity is longevity and this hardware is so simple it really doesn’t break or need maintenance or repair. In fact, when you disassemble it you essentially have a power supply, a simple backplane and plug-in circuit boards that link together. It feels like you took apart a computer from 1978. For under a hundred dollars I received an AutoPatch 1YDM that allows me to switch 4 levels of 8 inputs to 8 outputs.

Initially these were configured using only 3 levels (Composite Video, Left Audio, Right Audio) but are now reconfigured as Component Video and Digital Audio. Thats the great thing about an AutoPatch , a signal is just a signal, it really as no other meaning. The AutoPatch diligently does it job of switching input to output and doesn’t care about what is on the wire.

What does the AutoPatch give us? Well, we can now switch any input to 0 or more outputs and it can have these all switched at the SAME TIME. Its is this simultaneous capability that really distinguishes it from anything else out there at this price point. Lets examine what this really means and run some scenarios.

With this configuration you can do things like map Input 1 to outputs 1,2 and 3 (thus having Tivo on in the Living Room, Family Room and Bedroom at the SAME TIME with no degradation in quality)

Then, while that is happening you can switch Input 3 to the Office and have Input 2 playing Barney on Output 5. All at the same time…..

Thats really amazing when you think about the $100 cost..

Intial control system

To control it all I took 3 pair of wires on one of the Cat5e and allocated it to Infrared traffic (send/receive). These 3 pair terminate in a telco block which then feeds into a Xantech IR repeater/amplifier. The output of this amp feeds back into the telco block for output on the OTHER 3 wires and thus back out to the rooms as required (only one room actually uses this output right now). The result? IR control in every room of the house of any equipment in the garage.

I get all my Xantech gear on Ebay and from Home Tech Solutions. They are ’somewhat local’ (45 minutes) and really have deep knowledge on this stuff. Thanks to them for hammering into my thick skull how IR Distro works!
But thats only part of the solution. Now that I can control the equipment how do I control the switching without running into the garage and pressing buttons on the AutoPatch ? Well, AutoPatch, as a professional A/V concern, has generously solved this problem by providing an RS-232 port and a serial protocol for controlling the switch. Its a simple protocol to, well suited for these sorts of integrations.

My solution was to purchase Girder , install it on my Media PC in the garage (wall racked next to the AutoPatch), plug in a USB-UIRT and teach it to manage the AutoPatch. Girderlistens to the USB-UIRT and when it gets an IR code that it is set-up to recognize it executes a macro. The macro sends the switching command across the serial port to the autopatch. In practice I used my Pronto with old LaserDisc discrete codes from its database that I arbitrarily mapped to my bindings. So, as a simple example I create a screen “Living Room” and on this screen there are buttons for Tivo , DVD and Media PC. When I click the Tivo button on the Living Room screen it sends the IR code for ‘Next Chapter’ on a Pioneer LaserDisc. I trained Girder to recognize this code and map it to a serial command that says ‘Switch living room output to Tivo input.’ (CI1O1T is the serial code if your curious).

NOTE: Insert screen caps of pronto ui here

Result

At the end of this stage what do I have? A system that has moved all of my entertainment sources to the garage. These sources push line level data into an AutoPatch. This AutoPatch is also connected to all of my output locations and controls the switching of input to output with high quality and low cost.

I also get Gigabit ethernet to every room in the house and centralized phone distribution to every room in the house. Once I finish my Component/Digital Audio upgrade I will be using 4 RG-6, 1 Cat6 and 1 Cat5e which leaves 1 Cat6 and 1 Cat5e of spare capacity terminating back to the rack in the garage. Thats 8 pair and good enough to run 8 Component video baluns if I needed to! Serious capacity.

A quick aside

Originally, the system was configured to allow every room to send AND receive A/V sources. This was because the Tivo was hard wired into the living room cabinet and I didn’t want to move it. At the time my Media PC was in the Office and I did not want to move it either. This ability to send and receive from each room was pretty great but once we remodelling I converted all rooms to ‘output’ status and moved everything to the garage for central control. The only room that can ‘input’ still is the Living room because it will have a nifty Pioneer receiver soon that lets my wife plug in her iPod and control it on the TV screen so I’ll need to be inputting line level iPod from there to the rest of the house.

How do we control the Tivo in the garage? I just ran an IR emitter off my IR Distribution telco box (output wires) and mounted it in front of my USB-UIRT and Tivo. Voila, remote control Tivo.

Another aside

I chose to run line level audio everywhere. This is A Good Thing because it means less interference, ground loops, signal loss etc. Its a Bad Thing because each room has to have its own amp for the signal. Not a big deal when plugging into TV sets or tuners but it means that I don’t use those nifty ‘Volume switch in the wall’ sort of setups you see. Thats fine by me, at some point that ‘volume switch in the wall’ stuff will look like those 1970’s era Intercoms that all the hi-tek families installed. Useless and an artifact Thats my view on it at least. Now that I am moving to Digital Audio its irrelevant but suprisingly I have had to defend this position a LOT!

Next Steps

Working to make my control system ‘PC-less’ and truly idiot proof so that my entire system can be sold with the house. Look for future articles on this.