Advice The Home Improvement/Automation Thread

Now we're cooking with gas!!! I run an RTI AD-8X which is an 8 channel 8 source distro system run through automation. You can play any input to any output and so on and so forth. I also have an UHD HDMI Matrix but it's only 4 channels, granted we only have 3 T.V.s in the house so.. whatever. For my theater system I'm running and older Yamaha 9.2 that I can't remember the model of. Everything is in my tech closet in the middle of the house and I have all speaker wires and everything running to the needed rooms so there is zero equipment in any room except the projector or T.V. Its kinda fun.
Speaker placement
Outside - Front of house and back of house
Dining room
Kitchen
Master
Master Bathroom
Guest Bathroom
Subwoofer (located between living room and kitchen for bass dispersion).

I have upgrade goals though. I'll be moving my 9.2 system to a 7.2.2 by re-routing my wide speakers into the ceiling and then upgrading the o'l Yamaha to probably another Yamaha depending on whats out there. I'll likely add a second sub but will probably buy some new ones from SVS and change out my Klipsch which has done a fine job but.. its time.

The room needs a full audio treatment.. when we built it we did use some killer sound deadening insulation so thats fine but I need to build out a sofit to hide the side and rear channels as well as the projector and TPCast for VIVE wireless. I'll fill the sofit with acoustic insulation and probably add in a bass trap in the rear of the room behind the couches.

My whole house in ceiling speakers are nothing to write home about. Just some monoprice 6.5" in ceilings.
nice nice! In the living room where the tv is i have 4 height speakers + 5.1 discrete surrounds. All wired back to the wiring closet that holds the NAS, network switch, LV wiring distro, etc. My current struggle is that i have a 9.2 receiver that can do 5.1.4 atmos on those speakers... but its a tad old, and it wont pass dolby vision. A new 9.2 receiver that supports DV is a painful expense.

I have a bunch of drops for a primitive video matrix (driven by a pc, rather than a dedicated matrix), but I always run into HDMI length issues, and I like to fully exercise the feature set, so 4k 4:4:4 or 4k 4:2:2 HDR. Basically eeking every last Mb out of the 18GB/s capability. That gets super iffy at beyond 30 feet. I have it working right now with some HDMIs that are about as thick as my thumb, but if i had to do it all again (for 4k120 for example), id had to go with fiber, or HDbaseT HDMI
 
nice nice! In the living room where the tv is i have 4 height speakers + 5.1 discrete surrounds. All wired back to the wiring closet that holds the NAS, network switch, LV wiring distro, etc. My current struggle is that i have a 9.2 receiver that can do 5.1.4 atmos on those speakers... but its a tad old, and it wont pass dolby vision. A new 9.2 receiver that supports DV is a painful expense.

I have a bunch of drops for a primitive video matrix (driven by a pc, rather than a dedicated matrix), but I always run into HDMI length issues, and I like to fully exercise the feature set, so 4k 4:4:4 or 4k 4:2:2 HDR. Basically eeking every last Mb out of the 18GB/s capability. That gets super iffy at beyond 30 feet. I have it working right now with some HDMIs that are about as thick as my thumb, but if i had to do it all again (for 4k120 for example), id had to go with fiber, or HDbaseT HDMI
You're definitely in a different quality realm than I am. I prefer to focus on the audio portion then video right now just because upgrading my projector, television and then redownloading all my content sounds like such a painful experience and it's like you said, dolby vision anything and you're basically F'd. My Epson 5030UB is still running super strong and bright and i just can't see a reason to upgrade yet. I suppose if it ever kicks the bucket I'll revisit it but for now.. I'm 1080p with DTS HD Master audio. The only other thing I got was a Shield TV pro so I can stream my video games and control content MUUUUCH easier through Plex than my old Kodi system and I don't need a stupid keyboard in my room anymore.
 
You're definitely in a different quality realm than I am. I prefer to focus on the audio portion then video right now just because upgrading my projector, television and then redownloading all my content sounds like such a painful experience and it's like you said, dolby vision anything and you're basically F'd. My Epson 5030UB is still running super strong and bright and i just can't see a reason to upgrade yet. I suppose if it ever kicks the bucket I'll revisit it but for now.. I'm 1080p with DTS HD Master audio. The only other thing I got was a Shield TV pro so I can stream my video games and control content MUUUUCH easier through Plex than my old Kodi system and I don't need a stupid keyboard in my room anymore.
I still use Kodi (on a Debian system that runs my OpenHab2 HA, file server, web server, backup server, MAME, MythTV backend, and photo album website), but I really like the Yatse remote on my phone. Kodi's REST API for remotes is really robust, you just access it over the network instead of via IR.

The Denon receiver I have supports all those stupid Dolby modes (and 4k, though I see absolutely no reason to redownload anything, or even actively search for it), I just let the GTX 1050ti handle the decoding.
 
I still use Kodi (on a Debian system that runs my OpenHab2 HA, file server, web server, backup server, MAME, MythTV backend, and photo album website), but I really like the Yatse remote on my phone. Kodi's REST API for remotes is really robust, you just access it over the network instead of via IR.

The Denon receiver I have supports all those stupid Dolby modes (and 4k, though I see absolutely no reason to redownload anything, or even actively search for it), I just let the GTX 1050ti handle the decoding.
Remotes without buttons are ewww
 
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I still use Kodi (on a Debian system that runs my OpenHab2 HA, file server, web server, backup server, MAME, MythTV backend, and photo album website), but I really like the Yatse remote on my phone. Kodi's REST API for remotes is really robust, you just access it over the network instead of via IR.

The Denon receiver I have supports all those stupid Dolby modes (and 4k, though I see absolutely no reason to redownload anything, or even actively search for it), I just let the GTX 1050ti handle the decoding.
Yeah, I would say years ago I messed with stuff to make it work the hard way and thats what pointed me towards the RTI automation system and subsequently Plex + Nvidia Shield. I just dont' wanna screw with things that often anymore.. set it and forget it. I torrent my shit, its added to my library automagically and even my wife can use the remote. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
 
I dunno if I just got a bum one or what, but ive been very unimpressed with my shield after it being touted as the perfect amazing solution by eveyrone.

It regularly locks up, requires trancoding on a lot of stuff that it shouldnt, loses audio. The fire tv cube I had before it was very stable and snappy, but lacked some format support
 
Yeah, I would say years ago I messed with stuff to make it work the hard way and thats what pointed me towards the RTI automation system and subsequently Plex + Nvidia Shield. I just dont' wanna screw with things that often anymore.. set it and forget it. I torrent my shit, its added to my library automagically and even my wife can use the remote. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
Yeah, I'm almost in the same boat, but my integration needs aren't so rigorous as to require a single top to bottom solution, so OH is good enough for my collection of Zwave and MQTT garbage, and Kodi does the media and OTA TV stuff for me adequately. I still torrent manually, since I'm not keeping the entire internet on my ZFS array and only keep up on a few TV shows in addition to my streaming habit (Amazon, Netflix, and F1TV).
 
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I think this is home improvement related...

So I bought a Predator generator at harbour fraught a couple years ago. I've never changed the oil since I got it. I know, really dumb. I got off my lazy ass and got an oil change pan and did the oil change tonight. Not super great looking oil coming out of it, but whatever it's done. I'm sitting at my computer tonight and 💥 power goes out. 😂 Fired up the generator again. Called power company outage reporting line (literally bad that I've memorized that number by heart) and it's the typical 5 towns and 3000 customers without power. Fun times!
 
I think this is home improvement related...

So I bought a Predator generator at harbour fraught a couple years ago. I've never changed the oil since I got it. I know, really dumb. I got off my lazy ass and got an oil change pan and did the oil change tonight. Not super great looking oil coming out of it, but whatever it's done. I'm sitting at my computer tonight and 💥 power goes out. 😂 Fired up the generator again. Called power company outage reporting line (literally bad that I've memorized that number by heart) and it's the typical 5 towns and 3000 customers without power. Fun times!
If I remember right, they load those with a cheap lightweight oil for storage and you're supposed to change it immediately
 
If I remember right, they load those with a cheap lightweight oil for storage and you're supposed to change it immediately
It had no oil when I bought it as designed, loaded it with 1qt when I got it home. Was supposed to change oil at 20 hours of use. It's probably been close to 80 hours of usage. Wish these small generators has clocks on them.
 
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It had no oil when I bought it as designed, loaded it with 1qt when I got it home. Was supposed to change oil at 20 hours of use. It's probably been close to 80 hours of usage. Wish these small generators has clocks on them.
There are hourclocks you can attach to something like that. Fairly cheap on Amazon. Been a while since I needed one,, but they register that an electric field, or vibration is happening and start counting
 
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Getting rid of popcorn? That's not someone who will be a friend for long.
Yeah, he's moaning downstairs right now about how the texture on the ceiling was painted over, so there's no way to remove it except by brute scraping.

Here's what happened after the boy left the sink on for a few hours after throwing up in it:
IMG_20220707_073713741.jpg
 
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