I had a quick question, im working on turning my home into an automated home, but i need some advice on how to do my media cabinet.
right now i have 3 bedrooms, all with Verizon Fios cable boxes, and also a Verizon Fios cable box in my living room. I want to move ALL of these cable boxes into a media cabinet (so 4 total fios boxes). I want the audio to be outputted from the TV in all of my bedrooms. I want to move my home theater receiver into the media cabinet and have my living room fios box’s audio come thru the home theater receiver.
now, what is the best way to do all this and remain cost effective? i havent purchased ANY devices for home automation yet as i am just starting out.
How are you planning to distribute the signal? If HDMI then you could uses a Monoprice 4x4 HDMI switch, which also has a Vera plugin. As far as control goes of the Verizon boxes, you would need something like an SQ blaster+ or something else with 4 control outputs.
i wasnt sure how i was going to split up the signals…i was originally just going to run CAT6 cables to all of my TV’s and cable boxes and use HDMI-CAT6 convertors on both ends…whats the advantage of using a matrix switch?
can i use SQ Blaster+ with android based devices and other zwave remote controls?
The advantage of using a matrix switch is that you can switch any input to any output, or any single input to multiple outputs. The main advantage of this is that you could cut down on the amount of STBs or DVRs that you need; obviously the disadvantage here is that they might only share the same channel etc, and you lose the flexibility.
I have two TVs wired with HDMI cables, and another two that are wired via cat6 to HDMI wall plates also from monoprice, which are about 20 bucks each; although you do need 2 cables though!
For the SQ blaster, there are some third party apps that are supported by Android, also in the future there will be an official SQ android app.
ok cool…is it possible to add audio zones as well?
and can i still use my IR remotes such as my logitech harmony remote to control things in the media cabinet with that device?
if not, and i use my android/iOS device to control my devices, how will it control my TV which is in front of me, and my devices in a media cabinet with the SQ Blaster? doesnt the SQ Blaster need to be able to spit a signal out to the TV somehow as well? Is there a way to extend the IR blaster cable like 50-100ft from the media cabinet to the front of the TV?
As in audio zones wired directly from your AV receiver?
and can i still use my IR remotes such as my logitech harmony remote to control things in the media cabinet with that device?
If you have a harmony remote that has the RF base station/repeater, then you would likely also just want to use that in the cabinet to augment the SQ blaster.
how will it control my TV which is in front of me
The best thing to use is a Sewell HDMI IR injector or similar to send the IR signal over a HDMI cable (don’t think this works will balluns/wall plates that use CAT6 cables). They are really meant for the the reverse of this where you want to use your conventional IR remote in front of the TV, and send the signal the other way, however I use one myself for the exact same thing with it reversed, and it works fine! It would be nice if somebody made a two way version!
and on the end that goes into my media cabinet, just plug a wire into the hdmi wall plate and strait into the SQ blaster IR port and expect it to work? lol
You could but it only gives you one way IR control from the TV backwards, so while it would route the IR signal from your regular remotes for the Verizon STBs etc, or your harmony from the front emitter, it wont allow the SQ blaster to route commands back the other if its in your media cabinet.
and on the end that goes into my media cabinet, just plug a wire into the hdmi wall plate and strait into the SQ blaster IR port and expect it to work? lol
People have tried this with similar products, but it does bad things to the SQ blaster. There’s a thread somewhere that mentions this, and maybe also a solution to it with another piece of hardware perhaps that sits in the middle. In any case don’t forget the wall plates are designed to route IR the other way anyway so you would be connecting an emitter to an an emitter rather than emitter to recevier.
Also not forgetting the added complication that the SQ blaster+ has four channels
Yeah those things are nice product, however the IR transmission is also geared at sending the signal the other way to what the OP wants to achieve >>> SQ remote in media closet controlling sources and also remote TV’s
Yes, I really did miss that one point and reverse IR distribution. I have IR through antenna cable to cabinet and backup (aurgment by a GC100/18). One of the reasons why I use GC WIFI2IR and Irule because it is independant of the other system, but not the cheapest option when you need you need to control multiple TV etc.
So let me ask you this, how do people with media cabinets located in a central area in the home control their TV’s? My buddy who has control4 in his home has IR sensors coming from his centralized media cabinet location going to all of his TVs so how are they doing that?
Again it depends on what you want to control, what you want to control it with, if you have any existing spare wires to use, or whether you need to add wires:)
All my stuff is either controlled by either IR, RS232 or IP, so there’s quite a few ways to do things, and multiple ways to distribute IR over various different mediums.
I would start of a with a more detailed picture of your equipment, what you have there already in terms of wire (coax, cat5/6 and HDMI etc), and what your are trying to achieve. I’m assuming you need two way control, and that you want to use a combination of remotes that include smartphone, original, and universal remote?
ok i have a Denon audio receiver, 3 Verizon cable boxes, and 3 Samsung smart tv’s. the Denon audio receiver is for the tv in the main room, and the rest i want the audio to come out from their respective Tv’s.
I have 2 CAT6 cables running to each TV from the media cabinet location to use in conjunction with HDMI extenders.
If i can control my TV with my iphone/ipad/android tablets that would be great! i would suspect that i need my IR receiver from the SQ Blaster located in my media cabinet will need to be extended to each of my TV’s somehow correct?
Is it possible to control my TV’s via Wifi or ethernet?
Also, what is Redeye used for? can i use it in this situation to make things easier or is it something completely different?
Depending on the model TV’s you have then you should be able to control them over your network with one of the existing plugins, same goes for the receiver:
And for information sake, if one of my TVs isnt supported with that app, how would i control my TV? I can control all my equipment in the media cabinet with the SQ Blaster, its just the TV thats the problem lol…
[quote=“hvtopiwala, post:16, topic:172392”]ok that works for Android rite?
And for information sake, if one of my TVs isnt supported with that app, how would i control my TV? I can control all my equipment in the media cabinet with the SQ Blaster, its just the TV thats the problem lol…[/quote]
Not unless the developer of the android app adds support for those plugins.
Not necessarily…I don’t know the equivalent Android apps, but there other remote apps on the iPhone/iPad that support manual setup of a remote using various standards… “iRule” is one, so you just need to find something like that, or maybe even an app that supports the TV and the Receiver on a stand-alone basis!
yeah so then how can i extend the IR sensor from the SQ Blaster+ to my TV from my media cabinet? we are taking around 50ft probably…
or is there a way to extend IR over Cat5/6?
OR
can i use the iRule instead of the SQ Blaster alltogether? if so, what hardware do i need?
EDIT:
i was just thinking, can i take the IR sensor from the SQ Blaster, cut the wire, and splice it into a CAT6 cable? theoretically extending it over ethernet?
