Difference between revisions of "Picking the right components"

Revision as of 06:20, 30 August 2006

If you buy from a Pro dealer, they will come to your home, analyze your situation, and make the decision with you. They will offer a complete, custom-installed solution.

If you buy from regular dealer, the first thing you will need to get is 1 Core. This is the brains behind the whole system, and it must run 24/7 since it will be providing all the services in your home, like the security system, media server, phones, etc. Also, all the media in the home (movies, music, etc.) will be stored on the Core. Most dealers sell Cores that are commercial servers with massive storage and full redundancy so they will run non-stop without incident. Since these Cores are often bulky, they are normally tucked away in a wiring closet or equipment rack. However, you can also hook the Core up to your TV and use it as your first media director--we call this a hybrid. Prices for Cores vary from under $1,000 for a basic Pentium PC, up to $7,000+ for a dual Xeon model with 4TB of storage. See our ***Core comparisson*** guide for help deciding.

Then for each TV area where you want media you will need a media director. It's easy to add or remove media directors at any time. See our ***media director comparisson guide***.

For Orbiters you can either buy touch-screen tablets from a Pluto dealer ***comparisson guide***. Be sure to get a Bluetooth-enabled Symbian http://www.series60.com phone from your local mobile phone carrier--they make great remote controls.

Also view our http://plutohome.com/index.php?section=compatibility to see what 3rd party devices will work with Pluto, like lighting control systems, cameras, alarm panels, etc.

I will use my own PC's

First a warning Pluto is Linux-based, but don't worry. If you don't know Linux you'll never have to see a Linux prompt, the kick-start will do everything and the only interaction you need with Pluto is through a web interface, *IF* (here's the warning) your hardware is supported. Sometimes drivers are not available for Linux as soon as they are for Windows. Particularly, if you bought some new, exotic hardware there may not be drivers. If the kick-start CD (which is based on Debian's) is not able to recognize all your hardware and find the drivers, then things can get complicated. If you're looking to get some new hardware to run Pluto you may want to check sites like http://www.linuxcompatible.org to be sure it's supported under Linux before you buy. Or maybe post a "will this work?" message in our forum. If you already have the hardware it can't hurt to try. We've seen that about 80% of PC's are fully supported by the kick-start cd and will not require any intervention.

You will need one PC to run the Core software. Although you could install the Core ontop of your existing Windows/Linux o/s, or build from source, it will be tricky and you will miss out on a lot of features. You really needs to use our own distribution because, in addition to our own software, Pluto also includes lots of other open source projects, like Asterisk, Firefox, Xine, VideoLan, etc. We built "wrappers" for all of them which is how we get them all to work together seamlessly. For example, if you start watching a movie in 1 room, Pluto will use Xine on that local media director. Use the orbiter to move that movie to 2 rooms, and Pluto seamlessly detects the network capabilities (multi-cast switch, etc.), moves the video source to the Core using VideoLan, broadcasts to both rooms, uses VLC to do the rendering and changes the UI on the remote controls. If you use the vanilla packages from, say Fedora, none of that will work. Plus, a lot of Pluto's more advanced, kernel-level modules, like plug-and-play, bandwidth shaping to ensure your phone calls are clear, network boot, and so on may not work on other Linux distributions and definately cannot be done under Windows. So, we highly recommend you dedicate 1 PC and install Pluto's own distribution with our kick-start CD--it's fast and requires no technical skills. You can still use this as your normal, Linux PC--our distro is based on Debian Sarge and we take nothing out. You can add whatever software/desktop environment you want, and this PC can also be your first media director.

Note this PC should always be left on since it becomes the 'brains' for the whole house and all the other pieces won't function unless they can find the Core. In our commercial product, the Core is a fail-safe, redundant server.

There is only one special requirement. The Core needs to be your DHCP server so that it can offer the plug-and-play and network boot services. You cannot have 2 DHCP servers on the same network (not easily at least). If you have another DHCP server (like a cable/dsl modem), we recommend your Core have dual network cards: one for the "external" network, where your internet is connected, and one for the "internal" network within the house, and into which all your devices are connected. This makes Pluto act as a firewall, and allows it to co-exist with another DHCP server. If you have a DSL or cable modem that needs to be the DHCP server it won't be a problem--just plug it into the "external" port. Pluto's DHCP server only operates on the "internal" one. However, if you have only 1 network card in the Core, you will need to be able to give it a static IP and disable the DHCP server in your DSL/Cable modem. Otherwise you will have to disable Pluto's DHCP server and lose a lot of functionality.

You can also put other cards in the Core, such as analog phone line interfaces from www.digium.com for the phone system or analog video capture cards for surveillance cameras. You can put the PVR/satellite capture cards in the individual media PC's, or you can put several in the Core, which will share the video throughout the house.

Wherever you have a TV/Stereo you can use a PC or thin-client as the Media Director--it doesn't need to be on all the time and there's no software to install since they will network boot off the Core. Just be sure it supports has a good sound card, a Linux-compatible video card, supports PXE network boot (nearly all recent motherboards do), and optionally a PVR card. To use the Bluetooth mobile phones as remote controls, add a USB Bluetooth Dongle for each media director (around $25). All the media directors will report the signal strengths of all the mobile phones--this is how the Core figures out what room you're in. Since all resources in the whole house are shared, you will be able to control any device in any room from anywhere--as long as you're within Bluetooth range of any media director (about 10m or 30feet), you will have control over everything in the house. You can also use low-cost network audio players, like the Squeeze Box, wherever you want to add music.

To control the system, you can use the PC's mouse and keyboard, or an infrared remote, or run the Orbiter software on your mobile phones, webpads and PDA's.

Also view our http://plutohome.com/index.php?section=compatibility to see what 3rd party devices will work with Pluto, like lighting control systems, cameras, alarm panels, etc.