I am having 2 central locations, 1 in the loft and 1 in the cellar to avoid having to create a riser and to reduce cable runs. I will have a gigabit link between the 2 and am installing a 96 port patch panel in each to allow me to route things ad-hoc.

Each light will go back to these 2 points where I will have a distribution board. Relays will perform the switching all located centrally on the 2 distribution boards. This makes maintenance easy and reduces the number of points of failure. In house having a single or couple of points of failure is desirable as it means you don't have to start ripping up walls and floor boards.

Although CAT5 is going in, I may in most cases just use it for the the shielded twisted pairs. As there are 4 pairs you can send data and power down the same cable without creating too much noise. Also if you change your mind you can convert them to standard cat5 cables.

Check out some of my active threads for ideas.

Andy

I am on the same quest as yourself currently....

Although I am running about 140 separate runs of cat5e.

Some will have wall plates (phone, ethernet) some go to devices, sensors, valves, switches, etc.

This all goes back to a patch panel so I can route and change the use as and when I want.

Also worth thinking about POE.

As I have recently learnt from Mario, SPI is not good over long distances and I have had flakey experiences with it in the past. Noise is a real issue.

This is true with i2c but to less of an extent and there are ways of reducing noise and its effects.

Something to perhaps ponder, to reduce the effects of resistance you will probably want to step your signal up to say 24v. This in itself creates noise and other complications, but solves the issue of running over long distances.

I will share what I learn from Mario and perhaps you can share your ideas?

Andy

Hi Chris,

I completely understand the economics behind open source aren't quite as straight forward as standard commercial products and this is why I believe the community could dig in and help out...

Whilst Go! Bus may equally benefit from community input from some of the more advanced users I thought there may be a way some of us other users could help out. Whilst throwing money at a problem doesn't always fix it, I was interested in both the community's and Secret Labs opinion on how we could inject some help in to realising the Go! Bus dream. As Go! Bus is Secret Labs brain child its very difficult for people to necessarily contribute on a community platform and this is where my thought of the community and possibly potential hardware vendors helping fund this endeavour.

Hardware vendors can benefit from using Go! Bus once it is available to facilitate their own commercial products and ultimately this drives interest back in to the Netduino community. I completely understand that you can't invest more than the returns from sales of the Go! line in to developing it further, but without the new toys like ethernet etc I'm sure you would agree that Go! sales have slumped from the initial level of interest and this catch 22 situation of needing interested to drive sales, to fund development, to create interest, to drive sales.

This is where a possible funding scheme like kick starter could help Go!, Netduino and Open source hardware in general...

Kick Starter could be used to break the the vicious cycle and could enable Secret Labs to get an extra person working on the Go! line.

I guess if you could think in terms of what resources could benefit Go! and what would be required financially or otherwise, the community could work something out?

I would be happy to donate in this way, and you can either take the approach you did with AGENT, offering ethernet modules etc, or simply allow people to donate for Go! Bus 1.5 to become a reality sooner

Andy

Hi,

I have been a happy user of Secret Labs products for many years, I have enjoyed the fantastic, friendly and helpful community and Secret Labs energy and commitment to improve their products.

Now I feel it is the communities chance to help Secret Labs...

I would like to propose that Secret Labs start a Kick Starter campaign to help fund the development of the Go! Bus protocol which is holding back many avid netduino users and the exciting new products Secret Labs have on backlog. The community have all been waiting patiently for ethernet, SD and the Gadgeteer hub for sometime and it seems focus has shifted and the forums have gone a little quiet.

I would like to know the viability to allow the community to "give a little to get a little", by funding Secret Labs so they can employ some additional resources to either work on the Go! Bus protocol, or work on the AGENT smart watch, freeing up other resource to work on Go! Bus.

I would love to start getting some use out of my N Go! and would love to see the netduino forums that bustling hive of community interest they were previously.

What are your thoughts on this?

Many thanks,

Andy

@Juzzer you seem a pretty smart guy looking at your own STM board and your port of NETMF, I would love to see what you could develop for the Go! Maybe a Wifi Module or 1-Wire module or something all together previously unimagined?

@Chris if people like Juzzer were able to spend a little time how could they get involved with physically developing the Go! bus protocol?

Andy

I would as ever still love to see 1-wire, maybe even a can-bus module? And perhaps a wifi module?

Although I feel a chicken and egg argument coming on....

Which **should** come first Go! Bus 1.5 or new modules?

If you develop a module you would have to write your own firmware which would be a port around Go! bus 1.0. Then what happens when the generic firmware comes out for the STMs with 1.5?

Chris if funding is not a route, but developing modules is, can users have an update on where Go Bus 1.5 is.

It would be helpful to see:

- An up to date feature set

- Current status of the features

- Current issues

- A detailed definition of the architecture and how the various functions that are complete work and how you expect or propose the outstanding features to fit in.

Are SL happy to share this level of detail and perhaps the code for users to contribute/test?

There are a fair few people with STM discovery boards, I guess testing can be done for Go! bus 1.5 with an N Go! + STM discovery right?

Thanks again and I hope we can spark some community interest back in to Go!

Andy

count me in!