Hi. My name is Jim, and I've just started dabbling with Indigo and Insteon technology.
This is a long post, and I apologize for that. I'm trying to be complete with the information needed.
I suppose I should give you some background. I'm in the process of converting a bus into an RV for full time living and traveling. While I'm doing this conversion, I'm living on my parent's property, in the garage apartment.
My parents live in a 2 story house with a basement. There's an underground power line run from their house to the quarter kitchen (this is old farm land, and the quarter kitchen was the old farmstead summer kitchen). From there, there is an extension cord over to the chicken coop for keeping things from freezing in the winter. This is all on the "main" power meter.
The garage/apartment is a 2 car garage kit, concrete floor, with the right half of the garage having been built as an apartment instead of being a garage bay. There's a bathroom on the center line, with doors to both sides. I'm living in that apartment, and it's quite cozy.
To the right of the garage, there's an underground power line (2 legs) over to the pool shed. The pool pump, salt water chlorinator thingy, a small fridge, and some lights are run from that. There's another underground power line run from that building to the lean to that is attached to the side of the garden shed. More power outlets, and lights, and the charger for the mower. Also, some bug zappers.
To the left of the garage, there's an underground power line to the "old garage", which is a 12'x24' shed with a garage door entrance. So a garage door, some outlets, and some lights. There's another underground power line run over to the last shed, another 12'x24', which just has a couple of lights in it. We haven't finished wiring it, so no outlets yet.
If you picture the yard as a square, the house would be the top line of the square, and the quarter kitchen and chicken coop would be the right line of the square. The storage shed, old garage, new garage/apartment would be the bottom of the square, and the pool, pool shed, lean-to, and garden shed would be the left side of the square. If you then disconnect the top/right from the bottom/left, you get an idea of how the electrical is set up, and approximately how close they get.
For the data network, the heart lives in the basement. There is a crappy DSL line coming into a firewall. That then feeds 2 internal networks, those being the internal LAN, and the guest wireless with a captive portal. The internal LAN also has wireless, but it isn't wide open like the guest wireless. From the basement switch, there's gigabit fiber to the 2nd floor (dad's computer room), where there is dad's iMac. Mom's 13" MacBook is in the dining room on the 1st floor, and my niece's iMac is in another room on the 1st floor.
There is some buried conduit between the basement and the garage. Inside this conduit, there is a CAT5 wire which only carries the phone line, and a gigabit fiber link to the garage network switch. Past experience has shown that having any electrical connection (other than the phone) between the main house and the garage results in fried equipment when there are bad storms. So while fiber is more expensive, it is cheaper than yearly equipment replacements.
In the apartment, there is my iMac and my MacBook Pro. There are other network devices, but they're pretty much unimportant for this I think. (access points, time capsules, dish network dvrs, a linux server in the basement).
I also have a mac mini I'm planning to repurpose into my home automation server with Indigo.
What I have right now is Indigo running on my iMac in the apartment. I have the 2413U PowerLinc Modem attached. I have one ToggleLinc Relay to control the light in the bathroom (fluorescent fixture). I have on order 3 ToggleLinc Dimmers from machomestore.com. They should arrive next week. I plan to use them for the two main fixtures in the apartment, one of which is a 2 way switch setup.
I also have two old X10 appliance modules for the lamps beside the bed. Eventually, I want to replace those with LampLinc modules. I'm also using 3 of the old X10 motion sensors to detect motion inside my bus, in the garage, and in my bathroom. Additionally, there's an X10 mini controller beside the bed I'm using to trigger things within Indigo.
I'm currently running the 30 day trial of Indigo, but I'll be purchasing the Pro license Oct 13 (payday).
In the main house, and currently untouchable by Indigo in the apartment, is an appliance module for the living room lights. There's one of the old clock/X10 controller units (don't remember what it is called) that is used for manual control of those lamps. My plan is to eventually replace with a lamplinc.
As I said, I'd like to put Indigo on the Mac Mini. Ideally, that would go in the basement of the house (the biggest UPS is there), and would control all the Insteon devices in both sets of buildings. The X10 stuff can eventually go away. What I'm seeking is the best way to get the signals from a PLM on one leg in the basement of the house to interface with devices in both sets of buildings. I realize that X10 between buildings is a lost cause, and I'm not requiring that in the solution.
Short term, until I get everything in the apartment on Insteon and off X10, the Indigo server would stay in the apartment. Long term though, I want to integrate it all. I'd rather not have to run 2 separate servers if at all possible. Is this possible?
I'm sorry this post has been so long. I appreciate you taking the time to read it and any advice you can give me towards achieving my goal.
Thank you,
jim