I have been a bit busy in the last few months!  First are the hooks that have been placed in the ceiling. These will be used to support acoustic panels that are still under construction at this stage.  The panels will be based on whole sheets of 12mm MDF with various surfaces.  One will be covered in a grid made up of wood blocks. There will be about four different lengths of wood randomly located in the grid.  The others will be various foam and softwood materials.  I will be able to experiment with the height and attitiude of the panels to see what effect it has on the acoustics at the main listening position.  This should provide many hours of fun!!

    The lighting in my home theatre and entrance is now controlled by Clipsal C-Bus.  I have an eight channel dimmer, various key inputs and a IR remote control.  The best bit has been the programming of the system.  It is incredibly flexible!!  I hope to extend this system to the rest of the house in two stages.  Eventually the existing alarm system would be replaced by Clipsal Minder which integrates with C-Bus for even more flexibility!!  Check this out at www.clipsal.com.au/cis.  I want to get a C-Bus passive IR detector at the end of the entrance passage to the home theatre (this can be seen on the pictures page), then the system can be programmed to ramp up the intensity of the lamps when someone is walking through the passage and after a delay,  ramp the lamps back down!!  Boy, I love gadgets like this!!

    My home made IR repeater system from the upstairs room to the home theatre has been replaced by a Xantech one.  I have two Xantech 291-10 IR targets and connecting blocks which are connected in parallel in the main equipment rack.  There the IR signal goes into a Xantech 791-44 buffered emitter driver and then on to the emitters placed on the IR sensors of the equipment .
I have utilised existing Cat-5 cable for the Xantech IR repeater system and installed more for the runs to the front of the home theatre and the projector on the ceiling.  This has proven to be far more reliable than the Jaycar kit.  The C-Bus IR remote receiver also has a IR emitter placed on it so the C-Bus remote works through the Xantech system.

    I have just discovered a dedicated power run that goes to the shed behind the house that supplies just one outlet.  There is another power circuit for the shed apart from this one.  Seeing it goes right past my main equipment rack, I think it will be disconnected from the shed and a shiny new dedicated outlet for my equipment will appear on the wall!!

    I have been looking at new furniture as the old chairs are looking quite tired and are not very fashionable!!  I would love to have a couple of recliners but I can't justify the cost.  I think a couple of two-seater sofas will do for now.  I also want to build a raised platform for the seats at the rear of the room, there just doesn't seem to be enough time to do everything!!