AvBrand.com - My Home

AvBrand Exploring Technology

Index Touchscreen Automation Media Center Watch Door Buzzer Arm Computers Apps

The other sections of this site have demonstrated the various automated and magical things my home can do, but what makes it all work? Computers, of course. This page will provide a tour of the computers I use throughout my home.

My Desktop Workstation

My desktop workstation is where all of the magic you see in my home is created. It's a P4 2.6 HT, with 2gb of ram, 3 video cards and 4 monitors. I've got 5 hard drives, each in it's own individual chassis for cooling and data safety. A backlit keyboard (see below), great mouse, and tons of other stuff complete the setup.

Explore the area by moving your mouse over this picture! (Flash Player 8 required)

Here is a video of the AvKeyLinc software I wrote for my G15 keyboard:

The Touchscreen Machine

This computer has so many functions, it's hard to keep track of them.

It runs the Touchscreen software, and it's video output is connected to the touchscreen monitor.
It runs the DoorBuzzer software, and has the hardware hookups (part of the mess of wires) to actually control buttons and lights.
It runs the voice recognition and text-to-speech software used by the Watch, and is connected to the radio and sound outputs.
It runs the automation software and interfaces with the X10 ActiveHome Pro unit, used to make Automation in my home work
It controls the projection screen used in the Media Center of my home.
The control keyboard (seen in the photo above of my main workstation) is connected to this machine, and used for automation
... and more.

Hardware-wise, this machine is very modest. It's a Pentium 3 running at 933 mhz, and has only 512mb of ram. It has a tiny hard drive, but that's fine because very little is stored on this machine. The machine has two sound cards. One sound card is used to talk to people at the door, or over the doorbell, and to record them. The other is used to listen and communicate with the watch.

Connected to this machine is the interface box seen here:

This interface box allows 8 relays or devices to be controlled via the computer's parallel port.

More to come