One of the biggest things that plagues a lot of us is keeping our wiring neat and tidy, especially once you start to have a large system. When I started wiring my rack, I had the best intensions, and it actually looked pretty good. Fast forward 2 years and it’s a different story. With various pieces of equipment being replaced or relocated, its become quite a mess. In this series I will document my entire process of getting it “show ready”. Each segment will be detailed through photos and a list of equipment I used. I will admit, I will be getting some help from Sean Martel of Martel Automation throughout the process. Click the read link to follow the rest of Part 1.
So before we get started let’s take a look at what we are dealing with. As you can see from the pics, I have a fair amount of equipment (I’ll detail it all at the end of the post). Everything is housed in two Middle Atlantic Sim 5 43 space racks, with a cable chase kit combining them.
One of the big problems I have is that the builder just ran all of the cable through a big hole in the drywall. Nothing was terminated in the wall and therfore is connected straight to all the components. While some may view this as an advantage because there is direct connections, it really limits flexibility in equipment positioning, especially if you often change out pieces.
You can also see from the picture below, that all video through the house is quad-shield RG6, which is the right way to go, but running it straight to the matrix switch has caused a bulky mess.
Another issue is buying the proper shelf and making sure you have proper ventillation. For this project I will be using Middle Atlantic products exclusivley. I will be using their custom shelves for most peices, except for things like the cable box since I don’t own them and often change them out. For cabling I will be using Planet Waves Cable Station. For those of you unfamiliar, its a really great product. Its relatively thin in diameter, but still a high quality product. The best part is that you custom cut everything to length, and terminate with reusable ends(available in RCA, F-Connector, and BNC).
Well that’s about it for this installment. In the next installment I’ll get into more of the planning process, and fixing that ugly hole in the wall. As promised, here is a listing of my equipment:
Crestron AES processor/multi room audio system
3 x Crestron Pro Processors
2x Yamaha RX-V2500 Receivers
Sony STR-DA 333ES Receiver
Monuel Moncaso 932 Case housing my main media server running Windows 7
Sony BDP-350 Blu-ray player
Toshiba HD-A2 HD-DVD player
Polk XRD-12 XM Radio receiver
2x Linksys DMA2100 Media Center Extenders
Microsoft X-Box 360
Nintendo Wii
Neothings Borrego 8×8 audio/video matrix switch
Karaoke equipment (no comments please)
Media Server dedicated to running Cinemar’s MainLobby
Media Server dedicated to running Microsoft Home Server
Samsung Q1 UMPC
2x 12″ in-wall touchscreen kiosk PCs