Well how annoying. I haven't been blogging to this page for a while so I might want to catch up with what has been going on in the network at home. I recently added a Personal Weather Station (PWS) and a Cisco router to the mix. I find that once again I am not really trusting of the Verizon folk and I want to keep separate from them as much as is possible.
I did some wiring changes to the 4th switch so that the router only needs 2 wires through the wall; one from the switch in the side room (connected to the other 3 switches, with trunk lines) and one directly from the Verizon FIOS ActionTec router (as the WAN input). The PWS is connected from a Raspberry Pi to a 3rd wire into the side room and into the 4th switch where it goes into a port with a "patch" VLAN that keeps the flow of information outside of my home network. This "patch" VLAN then goes from switch #1 to the ActionTec. Thus, I only have two connections now to the ActionTec. I have effectively isolated the traffic from the PWS from everything else (as long as the switch on the ActionTec router acts like a switch).
I am also in the process of standing up a Ceton InfiniTV 6 to replace my HD HomeRun Prime. The difference is 6 tuners instead of 3, and this is a pooled device; meaning I just grab one of the tuners from whatever is connected to it. Since I really don't believe that my ZTec will be able to keep up with 6 tuners, I am going to stand up a Windows VM in the Mac Mini to host the Windows Media Center to the two Ceton Echo WMC extenders.
I might also use the 1 to 1 NAT capability of the Cisco router so that I can access all media devices from the subnet on the ActionTec. This will simplify the use of iPhone/iPad apps to control the media devices.
I have some time this weekend to start making all of this work together. Hopefully, I can get it into some form that will be acceptable to the wife and we can start getting rid of the FIOS Stb and VCRs to save some rental fees ($33 each month).
This is a blog mostly about techie things, what I am doing to my apartment network on the cheap, IOT, 3D Printing, Raspberry Pis, Arduinos, ESP32, ESP8266, Home Automation, Personal Weather Stations, Things That Go Bump in the Night, and some side issues that need discussing. Remember, sometimes the journey to an end is as much fun as the goal achieved!
