Before they got here, I needed to get the rails up. To get the rails up I needed to put ends on both the Cat5 and the power wires. This was a mostly uneventful affair. I am using XT60 polarized terminals for the power. Normally these things are used for RC cars/planes battery connections, but their ratings make them ideal for this application as well. The only hard part about this is getting 16 gauge wire and connectors to hold them hot enough to flow solder, but not so hot as to melt the wires and or the connectors is a pain. But overall it looks pretty good.
I used a standard keystone jack for the networking. Between this and the XT60, getting the rail off the wall is pretty easy. I did offset the connectors by about 1" in length so that only 1 connector would need to come out of the hole in the wall at a time.
The first order of business when my father and I started was to cut a hole in the wall of the HVAC room. The nice thing is that this room is unfinished (seriously even the mudding is terrible, they didn't bother to sand or anything). I used my Black and Decker oscillating saw to do the cuts. That has to be one of my favorite tools. It cuts drywall like butter and for the most part is clean cuts if you are careful. I forgot to take a picture after we took this out, but it was an empty space with studs, so you probably can imagine that (or maybe not).
Initially the plan was to use my 12" long 5/16" bit to drill down, but we figured out that with the studs and the floor joists that was just too short. We ended up getting a 9/16" 36" boring bit. A little costly, but it worked like a charm. We got the wires fished and ends put on them. The hole in the wall is just a little bigger than the keystone, but small enough that the end of the rail hides it entirely.
I needed power in the closet so we pulled it in from an outlet on the other side of the wall. Of course that was on the other side of the wall from where everything else was. We used wire molding to get it over to the other side. There is a drain near where the outlet ended up (about 3' below it), so we ended up using a GFCI outlet, just in case. Normally this stuff is stick on, but we used some screws into the studs to re-enforce it. The space on the left of the room is only about 12" wide. Lots of contorting around to get back there.
We also ran some molding to carry the cat 5 and power wires from the wall over to the box.
And then we hung the box. 2 screws into a stud and 2 into metal drywall anchors. I do plan to put some Velcro wraps around the cables to clean them up some. I also need to print out cable labels too.
And finally. Let there be light....
We finished late and initially the bottom stairs sensors weren't functioning. Quick diagnosis showed that the values were all over the place as if the pins were floating (not connected). But girl child was needing to go to bed, so it waited until this morning. I found that the connector at the end of the cable in the closet had 2 of the wires switched. (specifically +5V and the input for the resistor. Thankfully that specific configuration couldn't have hurt anything, but it would make everything crazy unstable.
So what's next? Well there is some fine tune programming that needs to happen. I need to adjust the light sensor levels so that the lights don't turn on during the day and also program the logic to adjust the max light level based on the initial light levels. (so the brigher it is in the room, the the brighter the lights are. When it's really dark and your eyes are used to it being dark full power is too bright.
Once that is done then it will be time to plan out the details for the other 2 hallways. I have the general plans of course, but I need to figure out exact measurements so I can buy the lights and channels. I also still need to pick up a couple more photo resistors and PIR sensors.
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