The problem with Airport Networking is that it just works

The often experienced problem with tinkering is that in the process you screw things up and have to figure out how to put all back together again. Of course, it's the process of rebuilding things which leads to new insights and improvements. In this scenario, this was all about Airport home networking tinkering.  The aim of the tinkering was to do 3 things:

• Maintain a 5Ghz wifi network for all my smartphones, tablets, Macs, Media streamers and Windows PCs
• Ensure it was a roaming network for each device to pick up the best signal, regardless of where it was being used in the house (3-floors)
• Get the Airplay playback to Sonos less prone to drop out because it was connected to my 2.4Ghz wifi network

Sonos Airplay
Using the previous version of Airport Utility (5.5.6), it was very easy to add Airplay to Sonos to throw iOS device music at the different Sonos zones. While the wifi radio on the 1st generation Airport Express was turned off, I did configure it to join the 2.4Ghz wifi network running off my Billion router. Playback on the Sonos Airplay was patchy in that it would consistently cut out the signal at various points in the playback of any tracks from my iPhone.  It made no difference for which zone it connected it to and which iDevice I used. I had the same symptom of issue with Rogue Amoeba's Airfoil which I shared previously. Given that Sonos creates it own optimised mesh network to optimally playback wireless music, my suspicion was that this had to do with the Airplay part going over the 2.4Ghz network where throughput is renowned for being choppy, regardless of any channel I chose.

The 5Ghz network
The initial idea was to add 2 Airport Expresses to the 5Ghz network (Airport Extreme – 'AExt') which would add coverage to black spots in the house, due to the shorter ranges covered by the 5Ghz mode.

I set up the first 'AExp' (for the lounge) using the 'extend wireless' option for the main 5Ghz network and it was operating fine.  Issues started to happen when I tried to add another AExp (for the loft) wirelessly in the loft to similarly extend the wireless network. At first, the wireless connection simply would not pick up. After a few soft resets, I managed to get it to pick up via an ethernet connection.  Then I found it was operating the extended wireless network at the 2.4Ghz which went against my aims. I ended up setting up another wireless access point with a different name to ensure I could get the 5Ghz mode which I wanted. Less than ideal.

What I learned from this was a subtle difference between Creating and Extending a wireless network with Airport Utility. While extending is fairly obvious, Airport Utility can actually extend your network by using the Create a Wireless network option. In this instance, the new access point  simply adds new 2.4 and 5ghz channels to the same access point name. In this regard, it optimises the wireless performance of the AExp where it is located, instead of forcibly making it run to the channels of its parent base station.  The result is a change as in the screenshots below. Loft AExp – tick.

Initial set up for additional base stations
- wired and wireless

So I returned to the Lounge AExp and thought it would be relatively easy to change the connection from wireless to wired by simply adding the ethernet cable to the switch where it was located.  What I found was somewhat strange - it seemed to cause a network storm and take down the Internet connection.  Take the ethernet cable out, and in a few seconds, all access points and the internet were back.

I suspected possible causes of this easy repeatable were either IPv6 LAN traffic enabled on the Billion and being automatically picked up on the AExt and AExp's.  So I turned this off and plugged in the ethernet cable again.  All connections went down again.

Then I realised — the magic of the Airport products, is that you need to soft reset them and run the Add a new base station routine in Airport Utility. Voila, it worked. 

Throughput wise (and concentrating on 5ghz), it has been beneficial. The rather hidden 'hover over' feature in Airport Utility (Mac) shows solid connection rates for each piece of kit. For example — iPhone at 52Mbps, Galaxy Nexus 39-65Mpbs, Apple TV 3rd gen 65Mpbs, Apple TV 1st gen 162-270Mbps, MacBook Air 162-270Mbps.

Results wise, I have 3 base stations connected by ethernet, using the same access point name across each floor, each with support for 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz support. The only difference between them is the channels being used for 2.4 or 5Ghz modes.  In effect, Airport Utility has optimised their radio signal as per their respective location.

Back to Sonos Airplay

Using the same principle of soft reset to re-run the set up routine for the 1st gen Airport Express, it is also connected by ethernet to my Sonos Play S5 in the lounge, with the wireless turned off.  When I airplay audio from the iPhone or the iPad, it works – flawlessy.

So the final Airport base station network now looks like this.

All ethernet wired base stations
- even Airplay with Sonos, which plays nice!

Morale of the story?  Use ethernet for connecting each base station to your network. Get HomePlugs and Switches if you have to, and while it will cost extra, it makes for a more satisfying device connection and playback performance across the entire network.

A couple of other points of note.  TidBits editor, Glenn Fleishman's video on Airport Utility is a great introduction on the latest how to on Airport Utility.  I go even further and recommend his book available in ePub, Kindle or iBooks which goes into extra detail for running and configuring Airport product networks at home or in the office.  Recommended.

Getting into home automation — II

My previous post, focused on some achievable targets in terms of monitoring and controlling devices plugged into the mains around the home. This post is the one which gets me excited — how to watch or game on any rooms which has a display in the house, via a universal interface which all the family can use.

Being able to watch the Boxee box, Apple TV (1st and 3rd gen), Sky+ HD or the Blu-ray in the other rooms around the house would be useful. Similarly, being able to game on the Xbox or the PS3 in different rooms offers flexibility for my family when we have guests and we need to give the kids different rooms where to hang out. It's also seriously good geeking project.

Saving you the long spiel in terms of what I've explored, this post focuses on the solutions now available, supported by relatively new standards and products which require quite a big investment (at least for my pocket) to make this happen. But first, let's zero in on what I'm trying to do here. There are 3 outcomes:


Centralise all equipment in one place. 
Simplify all rooms to a single display. 
Use common interface to access music, films, energy monitoring, lighting, climate control.


Seeing that I have up to 8 devices and 3 TVs in our family home, the first challenge was to understand what was achievable and how it is best organised to deliver multi-room AV. There are 2 aspects to this and Fig 1 brings this to life:

Fig 1 - 8x8 HDMI Matrix Switcher using HDBaseT Single Wire taken from the UK HD Connectivity site

HDMI Matrix Switchers
The first part is what all the HD devices connect to and then what can be pushed to one or more displays around the home. This is the switching device.  It has 2 parts to it a) control of the device via a mounted IR point attached to the source, through the matrix switcher and then onto the display itself.  It allows us to natively use the remote control even though the device is not present in that room.  The other part is b) feeding the HD source via conversion from HDMI to Cat5e/6 through the matrix switcher and out to the display itself via a HDMI/Cat5e/6 extender unit.

More recently, the multi-room AV market has been evolving from simple HDMI switching units to HDMI over Cat5/6 to now HDMI over HDBaseT as a platform. Over time, the evolution of the matrix switcher has overcome challenges in terms of HDMI cable length, signal loss/degradation and auto-adaptation to the display(s) being driven. The end result as shown in the Fig 1 is that each device feeds into a suitable equipped switching unit which has a HDMI in/out, IR in/out and Cat5e/6 out to each display panel. The more HD inputs in, drives the size of matrix switcher your need.  In my case, it gets to an 8x8 which is a beast of a unit (and expensive).

When I first looked into multi-room AV, my thinking was that each source could be left in its original room and I could connect everything on a point to point basis via a centrally located switch. I quickly realised this would be inefficient and a mess to manage.  This ended up changing my thinking in terms of where I put it, how the matrix switcher would be wired to all the HD sources and how neatly I can hide it out of the way. Yep, you got it – it would work best, be more efficient and be easy to maintain and support if I centralised the sources and switcher into one main rack (hidden from the family of course).

User Interface
Of course, to tie this all together in a neat and easy way, I wanted a Sonos like way to manage it all and of course, using an iPad or an iPhone. After a number of discussions with my local hi-fi dealer (Musical Images – hat tip), Control4 came up as the platform of choice, which could meet my requirements. Reading up on them, reveals quite an established organisation who built up out the commercial market, are a leading vendor for residential home automation in terms of multi-room AV, Lighting and Climate control.  Their wireless control of historically uses the Zigbee wireless mesh design as opposed to Z-Wave, although the platform has an extensible part to it, in which drivers from other hardware vendors can be written to integrate into Control4.  My discussions concluded that their premier controller would fit my needs. Going through an authorised dealer network (registered most likely with CEDIA) would ensure the design, installation and support of a Control4 installation. They also take care of the requirements of the matrix switcher alongside all other elements in the requirement and design phase.

And of course, to use Control4 on iOS, there is a license cost which are delivered on a site or single device basis.

How does it actually work?
While you can leave this all to a dealer, with all the inputs involved, I needed to get my head around how it actually works. I subsequently broke it down to this:

1. Master controller (say the HC-800) links into Router and Wifi network (Node 0)
2. Master controller is wired to HDMI Matrix switcher via Ethernet
3. Master controller creates new home mesh network for Control4 aware devices
4. Matrix Switch is also connected to each source device using IR
5. Each TV display also has an IR connected back to the matrix switcher
6. Each TV receives the converted Cat5/6 signal via the HDMI Ethernet Extender which is located close to the TV itself
7. The Control4 Software is programmed to replicate each native remote control of your source devices
8. Each device receives command by IR  

Fig 2 plays this out nicely using the single ethernet cable standard with HDBaseT

Fig 2 - Matrix Switcher using HDBaseT and a Control System such as Control4, taken from the Wyrestorm site

If any of you are experts in this area, then bear with me, I'm learning some of this stuff for the first time.  Any corrections or suggested changes are appreciated to make this clearer for anyone else reading this post.

There is also a really insightful Official Control4 forum where users and dealers exchange and share knowledge on installation, tips and support. You can glean a lot from here. Don't you just love the power or the web for collaboration :)

So, to achieve my objectives at least for an intial phase of getting my AV sorted, how much would this set me back? Up to £13k using the Control4 plus HDBaseT type switchers alongside racking, cabling, software licenses and design and installation from a Control4 dealer. Throw in a UPS and that's just the set up cost. I still need to figure out what the annual charges for maintaining this sort of environment would be.

I suspect there are some challenges with this set up. For example, can you really game with Xbox and PS3 with controllers over IR?  This may not work. However, the beauty of this platform is that is very flexible.  Adding in Lighting and Climate control through devices such Nest is all doable with Control4 being a platform where drivers are written for it. One of the other requirements I have is around energy monitoring with real time cost displays which again looks very doable with the requisite investment.

While the missus likes the idea of a de-cluttered equipment across the rooms and an easy to use way of access all the entertainment in a familiar way, think there a more challenging issue of selling this idea off the back of a new kitchen extension. I'll keep you posted on how this one develops :)

Getting into home automation — I

I've been recently talking to a friend of mine, who has been an advocate of getting into home automation.  It's a very interesting area given the development of a combination of most devices having an IP and being able to route signals via custom controllers, which in itself play nicely with smartphone and tablet apps. To be honest, without the motivation of a major purchase, it's been a case of getting a handle of where it may add value in my set up.

I have two areas of keen interest:

• Controlling devices connected to electrical outlets around the home
• Centralising AV entertainment around the home

In order to generate focused interest, I identified I wanted to get the following outcomes of these interest areas:

1. Monitor and control my assigned devices/electrical points around the house. Turn them off and on, automate basic functions and see how much they cost  in energy terms
2. Watch Blu-rays, HD media streamers in the lounge, or den (home office) and the bedroom.  Easily add more displays as needed. In fact, watch one source to multiple sources where needed

Home automation brings a number of technologies and evolving standards into play in both wireless and wired situations.  I needed to understand the key ones in the commercial and residential market to build budget estimates for the sorts of investments I might want to make in the future.  This is the first of 2 posts on the subject in terms of what I'm looking at in terms of initial research.

Device, energy monitoring and control
The Vesternet guide to home automation is a reasonable starting point to get a handle on the range of wireless technologies involved in terms of their history, functionality and implementation in products you can buy and install at home on a DIY basis.  Z-Wave seems to be the front runner, in terms of easy buy and plug-in products around the home. It also seems the more flexible, future proofed and integrable of platforms with the other area of interest (such as budget range the MiCasaVerde products.)

Using the interactive home planner on the site, and focused on the device energy management goals, it's gonna cost be £1.1k to be able to fit out a master controller and 20 sockets around the home. From a software standpoint to configure and manage the devices, group them in into zones and generate scripts/schedules to automate stuff, the Fibaro Home Centre 2 has Mac client and an iPhone app.

An achievable project, this would allow me to realise the management of all plugged in devices around the home.  It's also easily extendible to light switches and motion detectors around the home. Not sure I like the fact that home security is vulnerable to remote access and hacking exploits.

As a probabe small footprint Linux OS PC with Atom processor and custom GUI, it's full featured in terms of a range of devices you could add, configure and ultimately control and automate.  Their product video demonstrates this. However, a key requirement was to be able to report on the cost of each zone or separate device via Z-wave devices. Perhaps a module they will add, assuming there is a real roadmap on this niche European created platform.

Of course, early adoption in an evolving market carries a degree of risk, but in terms of deploying an easy to self-manage solution this has some nice design touches which may warrant a closer look.