Smart House.….hmm.…

I have been think­ing a lot late­ly about the Mono­lith­ic Dome Home I want to build. I want to have in it:

• Wire­less infrastructure.
• Sunken Game Table
• Plas­ma screens
• a plas­ma screen bul­letin board/calendar sys­tem that is linked to the net­work and can show 4 months at a time (touch operated).
• intercom/videoconferencing sys­tem
• net­worked touch screens in every room to access con­tacts, cal­en­dar, mes­sag­ing, music, video, etc.
• A grand office where all my kids com­put­ers are lined up against a wall and net­worked to a huge screen on the wall, so when I am in there with them and they are hav­ing a home­work prob­lem, I can put it on the screen and help. Or if we are in a net­worked game, I can have the game up on the wall, etc.

But I know a lot of it is wish­ful think­ing. But I have man­aged to get some of this in place at my new house.

I have a wire­less infra­struc­ture (not quite mapped out like I want it, but I am work­ing on it)

I am try­ing to inex­pen­sive­ly have all my com­put­er users be able to con­nect to a main cal­en­dar file in out­look (and contacts).

I have tak­en an old lap­top (that was col­lect­ing dust) and put it next to my phone base (on the bar in our kitchen) and placed a cool phone log pro­gram to keep track of every­one’s mes­sages (which can be emailed to them) and a recipe pro­gram (con­nect­ed to the serv­er) for us to access recipes in the kitchen. And even browse the net.

I can stream my music out to any com­put­er and to the sur­round sound sys­tem out in the liv­ing room (hope­ful­ly some­day I will buy the router that will let me send my video out there too!

I would like to get a bet­ter modem for my old lap­top and then it could be my answer­ing machine and email the voice mes­sages to the appro­pri­ate peo­ple. If some­one called for me at home, I would be able to get it at work and call them back!

I love technology!