Home Networking For Music etc

GingeG

Anyone point me in the direction of any good sites that help you network your house? Im not on about just the internet I am after being able to play music from my PC anywhere in my house so I am looking for wirefree speakers etc for in my conservatory.

You get the idea any help will be appreciated

ffym

There seem to be plenty of "wireless" loudspeakers available now but these still require a power source (Mains or Battery) and a sender / reciever unit eg:here
The problem with these is that they are simply audio repeaters - you cannot control the selection from the source as they plug into an audio ouptut jack socket.
I think what you are after is a wireless media player that will connect into a home network like this. You will need to network it with a server (PC that holds the music files) and connect it to loudspeakers.
A cheaper way may be to get hold of a second hand laptop, plug in wireless cards and a set of decent PC speakers instead.

Little_John

Your oterh option would be to buy one of the wireless music senders for your pc (staples were selling the creative one off a few month ago for £50) and connect it to your sound system most decent amplifiers can have 2 sets of speakers I know mine does, and they can be used together or 1 or the other. wire your speakers round the house or use wireless speakers you will get a better sound from a hifi than you will from pc speakers but they will cost more

sspyrou

Hi Ginge,

All you need is a PC that has all your MP3 files on it, connected to a wireless router.

Then all you need is an Music streaming player that connects to either an amp with speakers or to a set of wired/wireless self-amplified speakers i.e. they have a small amp built in to amplify the sound.

The good thing is that there is a wide choice and hence you choose one that suits your needs. The software for the PC to enable either comes with the streamer or you can download one off the internet.

Here are three popular ones:
Roku: http://www.rokulabs.com/products/
Squeezebox: http://www.slimdevices.com/
Sonos: http://www.sonos.com/products/?tref=ghome

A 54g wireless network is adequate for music.

If you also want to stream video you will need an ethernet network, although wireless speeds will get faster over time.

An alternative to a wired network is to use a mains network such as these which run at 85Mbs, adequate for video playback and music:
http://www.shopmagenta.com/product/HP85.aspx

Hope this helps

dirtyred619

All very interesting stuff, been looking at trying some of these technologies out for awhile but not been able to find decent suppliers.

If I were to use the Homeplug method above to connect say my PC to a Playstation2 to share the internet connection and play games online, would it just be a case of getting 2 Homeplugs and connecting one to the PC and one to the PS2 or would I also need a router connected somewhere along the line, I only ask as I don't use a router at the moment.

A similar technology that I've seen is X-10 which works in a similar way to homeplug I think but links up light switches etc so that from anywhere in the house you can control lights and appliances etc from remote control. Again can't really find any suppliers in the UK of X-10, does anybody use it or have any experience of it to point me in the right direction.

doogie

I used to be X10'd up to the eyeballs - the top UK suppliers are https://www.laser.com, https://www.letsautomate.com,https://www.simplyautomate.co.uk.

Best guidance site is Automated Home

dirtyred619

Cheers for that, plenty of reading material and advice there, can actually perform more/more complicated functions then I thought, will be investing soon I think.

When you say USED to be X10'd up, do you mean you found a better way of home automation, decided X10 wasn't quite good enough or justed moved and haven't X10'd up again. Actually though, when you did use X10 what were your thoughts about it, any reliability problems, ease of use etc (gotta say it seems easy enough to use though!)

Cheers

doogie

A little from column A, a little from column B!

I was kind of involved in a venture (that fell through) that would be selling and installing a competing, but a much more premium level product with a focus on new builds (proper hardwired stuff) at that point I also moved house, split up with someone, met a new someone who wasn't impressed by my computer controlled lighting etc, so she didn't let me install anything... ended up ebaying it all for a reasonable return on what I'd initially spent.

So, I kind of planned to replace it with something else but circumstances dictated that I couldn't at the moment.

When I had it, I both loved and hated it.... loved the relatively easy deployment and ability to do reasonably complicated things with a PC involved, hated the occasional reliability problems when something that should happen and happens 999 times out of 1000 just didn't and therefore everything else failed in a domino formation, and the fact that you could plug in something with a noisy power supply that would bring large portions of the X10 network down.

My favourite thing with it was my going to bed macro; one button press on the Philips Pronto remote to switch off TV, amp etc, put bathroom lights on, put bedroom mood lighting on then gradually fade it down in various stages over a 30 minute period.... which , when it works is the mutts nuts