Future-Proofing a new house

Dummy

I will be building my new house early next year. One of the things I want to achieve with this house is to future-proof (a term I recently learned) it. Broadband will be brought into the house and each room will be network enabled by cable. But there are a few topics I know nothing about that perhaps someone here can advise me about.

1. VOIP - Is it available at an affordable rate and what is needed? Does it work?

2. Because of the remoteness of the house I want to place cameras at certain strategic locations (external doors and driveway) around the house and be able to view these via the net. Again is this available at an affordable rate and what is needed?

3. I also want to be able to control the heating system, turn on and off via the net or mobile phone. Do you have any info on this?

I would be very grateful for any information or experiences people might have.

Regards.

SiG-NOSiS

Why not go with WIFI?
1.) Not really worth it!
2.) Network Camera's are very cool but Expensive!
3.) Just some X10 Units and you will be set!

Dummy

Thanks for that.

I have everything I need for a cable network sitting in the shed - it's cheap. Cable is easily installed while I am building and I reckon the possibilities it will provide into the future are endless.

What are X10 units? Do you have a make / model or something I can use to start my search?

Thanks again

mm2

http://www.smarthome.com

http://www.google.com

ToxicPaddy

You can get cameras that run on a network and can be assigned IP addresses,
they are small and very portable so easy to move and might be worth looking at
here's the link:

AXIS 205

Think they are about €200 each but cheap compared to most..

Tox

Dummy

Thank you everyone. My hunt has really started now. smarthome.com and especially axis.com is giving me the info to start with.

The axis.com site is really interesting as there is a live demo to be seen there (a UK petrol station and a uni in Scandanavia). Picture quality brilliant.

smarthome.com offers other interesting ideas I had not considered.

Sig-Nosis was right about this stuff being expensive but I'll be shopping around.

Thanks again.

stevenmu

I'm pretty sure there's software out there that'll let you take control of web cams hooked up to your PC over the net. I don't know what the max length for a usb cable is or if there's any type of repeaters you can get to extend it but the price difference in web cams vs proper networked cams would make it worth a look.

byte

Software like PCAnywhere (Symantec) allows you to control entire PC remotely. Maybe worth considering. Don't think it's too expensive

Link

unklerosco

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/features_story.php?id=54198

Read this, if that doesn't work go to www.custompc.co.uk type "spies like us" in the search bar n u'll find it... All about using webcams for securtiy over the web etc.