Finally Spending My YouTube Money

[Sheed3K]

It's really is nice to see Linus and Yvonne being rewarded for their work. As a fan of LTT it really makes me happy to see Linus get his dream home. 

[MrShanman]

I vote #1 on the flooring. I signed up here just to post that.

[Nystemy]

10 hours ago, James Evens said:

I can hear the CNC in the PC headphone jack with low impedance headphones ... 

 

Audio is a world where people can complain about noise that is 60-80 dB bellow the main content. It is trivial to induce such noise.
But to disturb digital signals one requires quite a bit more electrical noise. Especially for low speed signals that have even a slight bit of filtering. _{(the filtering in the circuit I provided is honestly overkill, even in some industrial environments.)}

Also, the "low impedance headphones" isn't that important. Most noise sneaks in before the final amp, and on that side things tend to be fairly noise sensitive.

Two examples of how different digital and audio signals are in regards to noise:
Line level signals are a fairly decent example, that is +/- 1.736 V, where we usually want a signal to noise ratio of about 90 dB _{(for the audiophiles to consider it "it is noisy as hell but I can suffer.")}, a fraction that is 1/10^4.5 of 3.472 volts _{(ie practically nothing or about: 109.8µV.)}, while a 5 volt digital signal typically considers everything above about 3-3.5 Volts as "high" and everything bellow about 1.5-2 volts as "low", allowing us to have a good few hundred mV of margin on each side even after voltage drop through long cables.

Or for the CNC machining world. Digital signals considers a mm of wobble along a straight line as "completely fine", while the audio signal considers it a poor job if you even deviate by 30nm.

In the end, EMI design considerations for audio and digital signals aren't even comparable.

_{(and for everyone getting confused about the "1/19^4.5", this is actually due to dB measuring power, while the power for a given impedance is at the square of the voltage, ie we get twice as many db as would have otherwise been logical.)}

Edited February 6, 2022 by Nystemy

[swimtome]

@jakkuh_t I love these videos.  I know it can be hard to work it into 'content', but I would really appreciate a bit more on the why's, especially on decision/plan changes.

 

Notably the dampers, why did you end up with proprietary AF systems?

[Invaluable]

Regarding integrating the American standard Acculink thermostat, I've managed to dig up this document on how to pair the touchscreen with a third party home automation controller.

https://applicationmarket.crestron.com/content/Help/Trane/Pairing Process for Trane-AmStd 1050 Smart Thermostat to 3rd Party Controllers.pdf

 

There is a module available for control4 and AMX, but the crestron one has been pulled. Seems to be some issues with SSL.

Haven't found any API documentation, but with the control4/AMX module someone might be able to reverse engineer that thing.

Or just contact the module developer and commission a HA integration. controlconcepts.net

[dogwitch]

when  yvonne says this room has more bling then i do...

linus you are one luck lucky bastard!

[power666]

On 2/5/2022 at 2:17 PM, Ultraforce said:

The AV is not of concern, Linus has previously explained but while he has a blu-ray/DVD collection he copies them onto his Plex server and streams them through that. Making dvd players unnecessary.

 

It is more about accessibility and flexibility as it doesn't necessarily have to be Playstations or DVD/Blu-ray players in this type of topology.  You can pretty much embed any HDMI signal + USB and output it else where over a network to leverage a system in another room.  The idea is great for keeping loud, noisy, power hungry systems away from where the work is actually done. However, that doesn't meant here aren't any trade offs....

 

On 2/5/2022 at 1:38 PM, ntindle said:

Have y’all looked into Crestron NVX/NAX (Network Video/Audio) systems for managing all the AV? I know it’s a bit out of touch with the consumer stuff but you could write a Home Assistant plugin to manage it. It would keep you from needing to buy 10 PlayStations and DVD players and putting them all over the house. 
 

I would really recommend at least taking a look into it. 
 

disclosure; I am an engineer for Crestron but this is not sponsored message. I do not speak for the company. 

 

The problem is that NVX has its issues in terms of quality as compressing 3840 x 2160@60 Hz down into a bit rate to transmit over 1 Gbit Ethernet is not the greatest quality.  I've seen both of Crestron's algorithms using JPEG 2000 (Gen 1) and JPEG-XS (Gen 2) and I can tell what I'm seeing is being compressed.  For some applications it is more difficult tell.  Simply put, it is unrealistic to expect 4k/UHD high quality, low latency video to be pumped over 1 Gbit of bandwidth using realtime encoding.  This goes for other video implementations of AV-over-IP including Extron, Biamp, Atlona, QSC, Samsung/Harman/AMX/SVSI and many others.  The vendors that do have good quality are all using 10 Gbit Ethernet which has its trade offs in terms of cost.  Granted for businesses and video production going to 10 Gbit (or faster) is far more common than in a residential environment.  The home network here certainly can support 10 Gbit in many locations so that is not much of an issue but it would require upgrading the backend infrastructure more.  The compromise I see is 2.5 Gbit Ethernet as that should be the big consumer networking upgrade. However finding AV-over-IP solutions supporting 2.5 Gbit is surprisingly slim at this time.  Crestron has it on their roadmap for 8K video support but I fear for that level of quality, visual compromises will also occur similar to 4k/UHD over 1 Gbit.  However, 2.5 Gbit support probably would be the necessary bandwidth boost to finally provide 4K/UHD quality.  I will say that 1080p quality, 1 Gbit is perfectly fine for nearly every AV-over-IP solution I've seen.  

 

The other big downside to AV-over-IP even at high bit rates is that there is no single interoperable standard (yet).  My Crestron (and other vendor) reps have yet provide me with a viable transition plan when that eventually does happen as they all know a bigger player in the media market (Apple, Google, Samsung, nVidia, AMD, Intel take your pick) will come out with a solution that deprecates all of these proprietary implementations.  The closest reasonable response were those that piggybacked on other standards (like SMPTE or AVB) which will continue to be supported out of necessity/continued interoperability.  AV-over-IP is the wave of the future but until that interoperable standard arrives, it is best to keep a distance and watch what happens in this segment.

 

While not low latency, there is an interoperable standard in H.264/H.265 streaming and a technology Crestron fully supports on other products.  However for NVX supporting these is surprisingly absent.  Conceptually a NVX end point should be able to play a stream directly off of a plex server or DMC-STRO card straight off of a Crestron DM matrix switcher.

 

The other downside with NVX is that various features are lost such as variable rate refresh.  Considering the latency sensitive nature of NXV this is a feature that could cut down on the end-to-end latency by being able to pre-empt a refresh call from the display when a frame arrives.   I've asked this directly to Crestron engineers at Masters before and got some interesting looks of 'why didn't I think of this?'.  In comparison, the links in this video are simply DP over fiber which provides the full DP bandwidth and feature set end-to-end with only a few miliseconds of latency for media conversion.  More expensive but zero compromise in a point-to-point scenario.

 

While the video world is full of compromises, moving to an IP based audio system does have huge benefits.  First off there already is an interoperable standard in AES67 for media transport (which the Crestron NXA does support  ) and AVB.  The most popular audio-over-the-network solution, Dante, is also interoperable with AES67.  The tricky part is de-embedding multichannel audio and getting it onto the network.  If all your doing is PCM or decoding at the host, there are far more options since DRM doesn't get in the way.  Once on the network, I'd recommend outputting everything to a centralized DSP for mixing/speaker specific EQ from any source and then output that to some PoE based network speakers or a network capable amplifier as appropriate.  It saves so much in terms of cabling and very flexible in terms of multichannel source routing/mixing.  Crestron's expanding into this market but what they've shown so far is not ideal for this residential use-case.  While my Crestron rep hasn't explicitly stated as such, I strongly suspect the silicon shortage is impacting what they can release as they've acknowledged several holes in their line up (Procise retired).

 

[Middcore]

I clicked on this video expecting to finally see finished rooms. I guess if it feels like it's taking a long time to viewers it must feel like an eternity to Linus and fam.

 

Yvonne's hair looks cool. 

[Theshadowguy]

On 2/5/2022 at 2:38 PM, ntindle said:

Have y’all looked into Crestron NVX/NAX (Network Video/Audio) systems for managing all the AV? I know it’s a bit out of touch with the consumer stuff but you could write a Home Assistant plugin to manage it. It would keep you from needing to buy 10 PlayStations and DVD players and putting them all over the house. 
 

I would really recommend at least taking a look into it. 
 

disclosure; I am an engineer for Crestron but this is not sponsored message. I do not speak for the company. 

Completely disagree. I install crestron systems and other commercial systems like crestron and personally use a 4x8 HDMI 2.1 matrix that is probably a third of the cost of the compatible crestron matrixes on the market, and is controlled using my Logitech harmony and even home assistant. I use seperate controllers and seperate hubs for each room. Pain to setup but solid when it's going.

[Theshadowguy]

On 2/5/2022 at 3:17 PM, Nystemy said:

In regards to remote buttons for actuating the start and reset buttons.

All one needs is two of these, one for each signal:

Any small signal NPN transistor should do.
The 100nF capacitor on the transistor's base is to negate any EMI from reeking havoc on the system. And the transistor is mainly there so we don't have to send any major currents long distance. 5V can be gotten from almost any USB port, thanks to the 5Vsb from the PSU. (a nice use for one of those extra internal USB 2.0 headers one usually have left over.) With this circuit, one should logically be able to extend the signal a more or less silly distance. (likely a good few km.) Though, I would go with twisted pairs as to further reduce EMI.

You could do this but I came here to recommend using an ESP32 as their using home assistant. Wire it to the front panel header for both power and reset, and you can control them in home assist using ESPHome. I do this exact thing but also have a trigger if the front panel led is low/off to hit the power button automatically.

[Nystemy]

1 hour ago, Theshadowguy said:

You could do this but I came here to recommend using an ESP32 as their using home assistant. Wire it to the front panel header for both power and reset, and you can control them in home assist using ESPHome. I do this exact thing but also have a trigger if the front panel led is low/off to hit the power button automatically.

Already one step ahead of you on that front as someone else recommended RS484 or CAN bus for the remote switch:

Quote

RS484/232 is generally rather overkill for a simple remote switch due to the extra complexities that it carries. Then one could instead just use a Raspberry PI or Aurdino and hook it straight into the home automation suite, something that wouldn't be particularly hard in practice, though dubious to why one would need that. _{(Though, being able to start the computer remotely and remote into it from the office or elsewhere would have some advantages for some people.)}

Though, remotely being able to start a computer tends to also bring in the risk of remotely turning it off. Depending on what one does with the computer, that is risk is more or less problematic.

[Needfuldoer]

2 hours ago, Nystemy said:

Though, remotely being able to start a computer tends to also bring in the risk of remotely turning it off. Depending on what one does with the computer, that is risk is more or less problematic.

That's where server hardware with built-in IPMI comes into its element.

[Markmjb]

Couldn't remember the video that came before this so had to search the youtube channel with "I need help". Well Played @jakkuh_t ,well played. 

[ntindle]

16 hours ago, Theshadowguy said:

Completely disagree. I install crestron systems and other commercial systems like crestron and personally use a 4x8 HDMI 2.1 matrix that is probably a third of the cost of the compatible crestron matrixes on the market, and is controlled using my Logitech harmony and even home assistant. I use seperate controllers and seperate hubs for each room. Pain to setup but solid when it's going.

What matrix do you use? I may pick it up.  I’ll admit it’s sometimes the cost is a bit rich for my blood but I figured Linus could afford it.
 

Also you can control Crestron systems with Home assistant if you want to. It’s what I do in my own home. 

[ntindle]

On 2/6/2022 at 6:12 PM, power666 said:

 

It is more about accessibility and flexibility as it doesn't necessarily have to be Playstations or DVD/Blu-ray players in this type of topology.  You can pretty much embed any HDMI signal + USB and output it else where over a network to leverage a system in another room.  The idea is great for keeping loud, noisy, power hungry systems away from where the work is actually done. However, that doesn't meant here aren't any trade offs....

 

 

The problem is that NVX has its issues in terms of quality as compressing 3840 x 2160@60 Hz down into a bit rate to transmit over 1 Gbit Ethernet is not the greatest quality.  I've seen both of Crestron's algorithms using JPEG 2000 (Gen 1) and JPEG-XS (Gen 2) and I can tell what I'm seeing is being compressed.  For some applications it is more difficult tell.  Simply put, it is unrealistic to expect 4k/UHD high quality, low latency video to be pumped over 1 Gbit of bandwidth using realtime encoding.  This goes for other video implementations of AV-over-IP including Extron, Biamp, Atlona, QSC, Samsung/Harman/AMX/SVSI and many others.  The vendors that do have good quality are all using 10 Gbit Ethernet which has its trade offs in terms of cost.  Granted for businesses and video production going to 10 Gbit (or faster) is far more common than in a residential environment.  The home network here certainly can support 10 Gbit in many locations so that is not much of an issue but it would require upgrading the backend infrastructure more.  The compromise I see is 2.5 Gbit Ethernet as that should be the big consumer networking upgrade. However finding AV-over-IP solutions supporting 2.5 Gbit is surprisingly slim at this time.  Crestron has it on their roadmap for 8K video support but I fear for that level of quality, visual compromises will also occur similar to 4k/UHD over 1 Gbit.  However, 2.5 Gbit support probably would be the necessary bandwidth boost to finally provide 4K/UHD quality.  I will say that 1080p quality, 1 Gbit is perfectly fine for nearly every AV-over-IP solution I've seen.  

 

The other big downside to AV-over-IP even at high bit rates is that there is no single interoperable standard (yet).  My Crestron (and other vendor) reps have yet provide me with a viable transition plan when that eventually does happen as they all know a bigger player in the media market (Apple, Google, Samsung, nVidia, AMD, Intel take your pick) will come out with a solution that deprecates all of these proprietary implementations.  The closest reasonable response were those that piggybacked on other standards (like SMPTE or AVB) which will continue to be supported out of necessity/continued interoperability.  AV-over-IP is the wave of the future but until that interoperable standard arrives, it is best to keep a distance and watch what happens in this segment.

 

While not low latency, there is an interoperable standard in H.264/H.265 streaming and a technology Crestron fully supports on other products.  However for NVX supporting these is surprisingly absent.  Conceptually a NVX end point should be able to play a stream directly off of a plex server or DMC-STRO card straight off of a Crestron DM matrix switcher.

 

The other downside with NVX is that various features are lost such as variable rate refresh.  Considering the latency sensitive nature of NXV this is a feature that could cut down on the end-to-end latency by being able to pre-empt a refresh call from the display when a frame arrives.   I've asked this directly to Crestron engineers at Masters before and got some interesting looks of 'why didn't I think of this?'.  In comparison, the links in this video are simply DP over fiber which provides the full DP bandwidth and feature set end-to-end with only a few miliseconds of latency for media conversion.  More expensive but zero compromise in a point-to-point scenario.

 

While the video world is full of compromises, moving to an IP based audio system does have huge benefits.  First off there already is an interoperable standard in AES67 for media transport (which the Crestron NXA does support  ) and AVB.  The most popular audio-over-the-network solution, Dante, is also interoperable with AES67.  The tricky part is de-embedding multichannel audio and getting it onto the network.  If all your doing is PCM or decoding at the host, there are far more options since DRM doesn't get in the way.  Once on the network, I'd recommend outputting everything to a centralized DSP for mixing/speaker specific EQ from any source and then output that to some PoE based network speakers or a network capable amplifier as appropriate.  It saves so much in terms of cabling and very flexible in terms of multichannel source routing/mixing.  Crestron's expanding into this market but what they've shown so far is not ideal for this residential use-case.  While my Crestron rep hasn't explicitly stated as such, I strongly suspect the silicon shortage is impacting what they can release as they've acknowledged several holes in their line up (Procise retired).

 

All fair info here. I will say that Linus seems to be the type of guy to run 10 gig inside his house. 
 

I will also say that as an engineer at Crestron, I can’t speak on a lot of the stuff on the roadmap for I hope obvious reasons. I would write pages on the topic. 

[Ultraforce]

On 2/5/2022 at 1:16 PM, omniful said:

If someone would be willing to share the name of the general contractor that organized all of this I would appreciate it. I'm looking at a VERY similar renovation this year and I just can't find anyone who understands the whole picture, especially the IT infrastructure parts. I would definitely fly this person and crew from Canada for the job.

In the latest video of the saga he has stated the renovation company that is working on the renovations for them is Shirmar they do show examples of their work on their website, but it's either an example showcasing it while it's still under construction or when there doesn't seem to be a before and after. Though I imagine if you call you might be able to see a better example of their work.

 

[Imaya]

Hey Yvonne!

 

I saw you were trying to choose a stain color for your floors! I made an account just to chime in.

 

Specifically, I just went through a very similiar choice as you! I bought my first house down here in the pnw in late 2020, and it is similar vintage to yours. These videos are highly relevant and interesting to me as I am making my own interior design decisions AND updating things to meet my tech needs. Both you in your design choices and Linus in his tech ones are making similar ones to me, so I figured my input on the floors may be of interest to you.  

 

ANYWAYS. First thing I did before I moved in was extend my hardwood and refinished- I think the color I did might be the #2 one you are looking at, which is most specifically why I am posting. I hope it is helpful to share some pics of results, as well as the stain, technique, wood type, and finish, to help you choose. Pics, of course, don't do proper justice to the color, finish properties, and overall effect

 

First, I LOVE my refinished wood floors. I wanted natural wood colors to come out, and I like the look of multicolored boards that emphasize the unique grain and quality of natural wood. The team worked with me to find the right combo of of things, and I couldn't be happier. I highly recommend getting the flush vent covers too, if you haven't already.

 

The wood is red oak. They used Duraseal Classic Grey straight with a water application. I wanted a more matte finish, so they used an oil based Swedish finish Glitsa.

 

Long post, I know. Hope this info helps! Feel free to DM or email me if you have more questions or want to bounce some design ideas off of a tech lady who also is figuring out how to balance tech and design to support each other in her new home.

[webdestroya]

My contribution for the $5000 bounty:

 

That thermostat is controllable without a Nexia subscription. I have a different Nexia smart thermostat, and have it hooked into HomeAssistant without any cloud subscription.

 

You will however have to emulate the Nexia API system. The thermostat and API uses a self-signed certificate (which I have the key for), which you can use to trick it into thinking you are nexia (and just intercept the DNS and route it to your own system).

 

It's pretty involved, but do-able if you want to do this. 

 

1) Setup a webapp to serve the Nexia API (this includes LogUpload, UpdateCheck, and Servicer info)

2) Setup another server for the SMIL Service (this is nexia's _HIDEOUS_ command/control API where it sends stupid nonsensical commands to control the thermostat. Think like: "1.2.3.4.882.23.144.534.1:setPoint(35,45)"

3) Setup another server for the Faceplate Service (this is Nexia's much nicer command/control API, that annoyingly is only used for some features)

4) Setup an MQTT service (or some message bus) to allow these 3 services to communicate with one another.

5) Setup a DNS Server to respond to queries for *.mynexia.com 

6) Setup an HAProxy or something to serve the self-signed certificate as well as route to the various TCP servers above.

7) I set a custom rule on my DHCP server that changes the DNS servers issued to the thermostat, that way I can route all it's DNS queries to my BIND server

8) Home assistant will hit endpoints on the API that you make to set the temperature. These endpoints will submit messages to the bus that will instruct the SMIL service to turn on/off/set target for the thermostat

 

You can confirm this will work if you do an HTTPs call to the endpoints that the thermostat hits.

 

You should see a certificate that is:

Subject: C=US; ST=NC; L=Davidson; O=Ingersoll Rand; OU=Nexia SSL; CN=*.mynexia.com; emailAddress=postmaster@mynexia.com

Issuer: C=US; ST=NC; L=Davidson; O=Ingersoll Rand; OU=Nexia SSL; CN=*.mynexia.com; emailAddress=postmaster@mynexia.com

 

If you see that, I have the key. If you do not see that (but still see a self-signed certificate) then the key is probably on the device's firmware, which you can download and extract. Good thing Nexia takes security seriously.

 

(I'm new here, not sure how to actually submit this to Linus/Jake)

 

 

[chrome_wheels]

Wow, that is one impressive home design. So now, everyday a game day? 

[mGoodwin]

I have been trying to go the thunderbolt route to the "put the computers in the next door room" since I saw the optical cable video they made a couple of months ago, but it seems not to be the choice made here. I however don't recognize / catch what solution they are going with instead? I have the corning cable, but have not found any TB docks that will actually "wake up" when used with it.

 

\M

[melon_monopoly]

 

Cool solution @webdestroya.

 

Just wanted to share that an official solution has been posted for HomeAssistant integration with Nexia. But local integration is still coming for the XL1050 Linus is using in the new house. https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/nexia/
 

Currently working on using the 3rd party connector system built into the thermostat and reverse-engineering the pairing protocol/network command structure. Looks like the drivers Lua code base reveals enough to build python module to emulate a supported 3rd party controller local on the network and send commands by proxy to the thermostat. Will look to update once I get somewhere with it. If anyone is more comfortable with Lua give me a shout ? 

 

Did find some interesting things buried inside the XL1050 Trane Drivers including the cert/keys for network comms internally and out the remote connection. 

Some interesting device accounts that if you go through the 240 second remote connection phase someone scanning the port to see if it was open could send over the creds, pin and pass (Control4 Certificate base64 encoded) over the network and gain access to the thermostat. Interesting developer account (ControlConcepts) left in as a semi-backdoor. Im guessing for support to distributors and installers etc ? 

 

The drivers were interesting to go through and there are some unique ways of doing things, slightly clunky but it gets the job done. 
Found some weirdly creepy alert messages embedded into the thermostat options but unable to see a menu option that would allow for these to be set, don't have a device so can't see if they are there IRL. Ive attached them to the post alongside the display images when the announcement is activated. https://ufile.io/f/wt4f9 : WAV files of weird announcements. 

 

Hope Jake @jakkuh_t has found the Nexia Home Assistant integration already but if not linked above and will report back once ive got a local integration.

 

Cheers Melon

 

 

 

[dronenb]

I found a lot of the information @melon_monopoly found independently. Although, tbh, Home Assistant has a local Control4 integration, and Control4 supports LOCAL control of this American Standard thermostat, therefore you can natively locally control the system from Home Assistant through any control4 brain I believe @jakkuh_t. Might save a bunch of work just finding a Control4 controller on eBay and installing the package for his particular thermostat, which can be found here: https://controlconcepts.net/manufacturers-modules-and-drivers/american-standard/