All Apple All Day

As I mentioned in my last post, it has been a bit of a trick to get our Brinks security system working with our WOW UltraTV VOIP phone system. We only have one "phone jack" in the house, and that's the primary UltraTV box. So for now, we have a bit of a jerry-rigged situation with a phone line running through the house connecting the Brinks box to the UltraTV system. It also seems that, in recent years, there has been some serious consolidation in the home security world - Brinks installed this system when our home was built in 2008, and since then, they've been purchased at least once. Now, the only game in town is ADT. ADT can make our system work over a regular phone line for $29.99 - or they can make it work over a cell signal, for the cost of a new system ($99.99) plus a monthly charge of $44.99. I'm going with option 1. Option 2 does have its advantages, though - a newer security system could be armed and monitored via iOS, which is kind of o

I've got the opposite of the usual "home theater wife" - I've now received an ultimatum that the TV needs to be mounted on the wall, the wires buried and the TV audio running through the AV system, ASAP. Which is great news. On the other hand, we're still having a heck of a time getting our WOW Ultra TV system lined up properly. The first issue arose when our ADT security installer arrived - the phone jacks in the house, obviously, are not active. And without that, monitoring can't work. I was in NYC for work when the installer arrived, but my wife handled the situation at least as capably as I would have. His solution was to run phone cable along the basement ceiling, from the ADT box to the phone jack nearest the UltraTV box in our den. Then, add a splitter of some sort, and voila - the ADT box and the phone are both connected to UltraTV's one active phone jack. Except, now the phone doesn't work. And I'm not sure if the ADT line is worki

Well, not yet. But maybe soon. We have an AV specialist coming over to the house to give us an estimate on re-wiring the living room for HDMI and for in-wall speakers, and a security guy coming over to reconnect that system... and while I'm at it, a fence guy to get that backyard enclosed, and a yard guy to get the backyard less brown. So for the next few days, at least, no real updates on the projects.... at least until the estimates come in too high and I start attacking the drywall and floors with a punch saw, spade bit, and fish tape. In the meantime, we're expecting the 2 new sets of 3D glasses today. That gives us 4, which should be enough to accommodate most movie-watching groups at our house.  Off to Monoprice to get the TV mount and lots and lots of HDMI - and off to Best Buy to get a 40" LED for the master bedroom!

Apologies for being AWOL the last couple of days. We were back in the city over the weekend - Cubs v. Red Sox on Saturday night, and The Hold Steady at the Taste of Randolph last night.  That was fun, but exhausting. Back to work. In the meantime, I have an uninterrupted week in the suburbs - it's time to take a look behind the entertainment center/fireplace mantle wall and figure out how we're going to run HDMI wires.  The "before" image. We're picturing built-ins on both sides. In other news, I managed to pick up 2 additional pairs of Sony 3D glasses on eBay for about $33 each. Still expensive, but having 4 glasses will make 3D something that we can occasionally actually do, instead of 2 of us watching a movie while the third gets a seizure from the flickering TV.

I'm not going to get too much into yesterday's WWDC keynote - obviously, Tim Cook did an incredible job and the biggest unveiled product - the new Retina Macbook Pro - is, essentially, the perfect notebook computer. But this website isn't about new notebooks. Or even, really, about Mountain Lion or iOS 6. It's about seamlessly incorporating everything that Apple does into my home. And some of the things that were discussed yesterday do affect our projects.  1. The new Airport Express.  IMPACT: Minimal. It's about the size of an AppleTV - the new Airport Express adds dual-band, and an extra ethernet port. But I'm not using my Expresses as the primary router - they're wi-fi extenders, and more importantly, music streaming devices.  I'm hoping that the A1264 Expresses I've been buying get a little cheaper on the secondary market - but that's unlikely.  2. Siri 1.0. IMPACT: Potentially, major.  I still have an iPhone 4, w

Who says we can't multitask? On to Project 3!  We made a return trip to Best Buy, and learned the prices had essentially doubled on most of their SmartHome Insteon products. ( I must have happened across a huge sale last time - and I have before/after photos of the pricing to prove I wasn't imagining things !) Anyway, I'm sure we'll be picking up most of this stuff at BBY, but in the meantime, it's off to eBay, where I picked up a 2414 SmartLinc central controller (retail $99) for $22. This will allow us to control all connected Insteon switches with an iOS device - which was the entire point of this enterprise from the start. The dimmer switches will be a bit more expensive, at $40-50 each, retail - and our home theater room alone is going to require 4. And a couple of LampLincs to make sure our table lamps get with the program. Back to eBay! We're also going to need (want) a KeyPadLinc in order to control "scenes" - i.e., "all

Tomorrow, all of the Apple and general tech blogs (engadget, gizmodo, tuaw) will be covering Apple's new products. We've already seen that iOS 6.0 will be discussed, if not demonstrated. Obviously, all of this newness may have some effect on my remodel/projects. But probably not too much. In the meantime, I'm off to Radiohead with a couple of friends, one of whom is a fantastic architect, responsible for designing most of the Wrigley rooftop clubs, and a handful of Chicago's most talked-about restaurant interiors (Nellcote, Sunda). I've been picking his brain about the home theater project, and he's had some great cost-saving ideas. So, off to Tinley Park. I'll have more tomorrow.