The Connected Home

When i first moved into my house i had a romantic view of my “connected home”

I had all sorts of plans and ideas of how my 21st century home would work.

I wanted to have a PC in the living room that would be connected to the television and display pictures, videos and music from another computer acting as a central store where my other devices (laptop, pocket pc) could all receive these media delights

I wanted X10 modules that could control my lights, heating system, even my curtains!

I wanted music being played to follow me around the house

I thought this is actually quite feasible (and after some research it i think i could have done it) but some events in my life took away the main factors to realising my dream….TIME & MONEY

So my plans were put on hold

Fast forward and i actually realised that i have actually put part of this in place without realising

My XBOX 360 sits downstairs in the living room where it recieves images, videos and music from my PC upstairs.

The PC currently dual boots between Windows XP and one of the Vista BETAs

At the weekend i also purchased a set of cordless headphones. The original idea behind this was so that i could play Xbox in the evenings as loud as i like without disturbing my other half or my daughter. The added bonus is that they are FM headphones (as opposed to infrared) so i could listen to music and have it “follow”me around the house.

I know this is cheating a little but the great thing about this i have all this functionality and it didn’t cost me awful lot of money and was setup in no time at all

Now all i need are some freebie X10 modules!

The following two tabs change content below.
Andy Parkes is Technical Director at Coventry based IT support company IBIT Solutions. Formerly, coordinator of AMITPRO and Microsoft Partner Area Lead for 2012-2013. He also isn't a fan of describing himself in the third person.

Latest posts by Andy Parkes (see all)

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.