points by WalterBright 1 day ago | 0 comments
I have a friend who is a real estate agent for the wealthy. He laughs at the people who automate their homes. The automation inevitably fails, the vendor has disappeared, and the owner is faced with ripping all the wiring out of the walls and replacing it. Usually it gets replaced with conventional wiring.
When my home was built in 1999, I poured over all the home automation systems. I opted for conventional wiring. But I did wire every room (myself) with cat5 cable and RG6 coax, in a star configuration. It has served me very well, no problems at all.
I don't use the RG6 anymore, as my TV service comes over the intertoobs now. The cat5 isn't supposed to work with gigabit equipment, but it works fine. Wifi has improved by leaps and bounds, but I still rely on hardwired ethernet, as it is stupid reliable.
[–] rationalist 1 day ago
[–] WalterBright 12 hours ago
Conduit is indeed a better idea, but it would have been too much work for me. I figured the bases were covered well enough with 4 cables to each destination - 2 cat5 and 2 rg6. The duality was in case one of the cables failed, or got a nail driven through it.
I think the best idea is to install conduit as the house is built, so that outdated wires can be replaced with newer wires by just tying the end of the old wire to the end of the new wire and pulling.
Just be sure to inspect the house as it is being built, because I think one user on HN wrote that conduit was required by law, but when he went to swap the wires, he couldn't pull them - he discovered there was only pipe in the visible terminations, not the whole route.