Home Is Home: The Physical Practicalities - Smart Home Automation with Linux and Raspberry Pi - page 124

then you will appreciate that the fan often becomes a comforting bedfellow, whereby it later becomes difficult to sleep
without its companionship.
The noise from a hard disk, although slight, has an interesting dual property. Although you (or your partner)
might be disturbed by the noises coming from a hard disk somewhere within the house, it can provide a very good
audible alert system should you suddenly hear the (normally) quiet hard disks suddenly fire up in the middle of
the night.
As you'll see later when looking at server types, some machines are fanless (thereby eliminating most of the
noise), and some can work from solid-state devices instead of hard disks (which eliminate all noise). Naturally, the
positioning and/or soundproofing of Node0 might make the concept of noise a moot (mute?) point!
The lights on most PCs are the simplest form of output interface available. The standard front plate contains
lights for power and hard disk activity, whereas the reverse has the equivalent for network activity, along with the
other visible light sources on the motherboard shining through the rear cooling holes. There are similar lights
on external hard disks, modems, and routers. The former lights give Node0 a distinct glow of cybercool (usually
because more technology comes with blue LEDs nowadays!), whereas the latter creates an annoying flicker
that, in the dead of night, is visible in the next room. Although all of these lights can be hidden by black tape,
it is usually preferable to hide the units inside a box, cupboard, or drawer so that the diagnostics lights can be
reviewed when needed.
In addition to being affected by heat, computers (particularly desktop ones) produce heat. And having one
on 24/7 can raise the room temperature by 1 or 2 degrees. You will consequently have to consider the other home
heating elements and consider whether placing Node0 on the ground floor of your house and allowing the heat
to rise 1 can provide any reasonable savings on your bills. The downside of this excess heat is that it might get very
uncomfortable to work on the machines in Node0 if they're in an enclosed space that is heating up by the second.
Consequently, install only low-energy or fluorescent lights here to prevent it from heating up any further when
you're working on it.
Determining the Best Room
Given the previous possibilities, most people will consider one of the following rooms:
u Living room : By being physical close to the TV and primary stereo system, the living room
provides good access for all the media elements of an HA installation. This eliminates the
need for IR transmitters and a lot of extra cabling. It's easily accessible if you plan on using
physical DVDs, and if the server is connected directly to the TV and stereo, you get the
highest-possible-quality AV. On the downside, however, having your server here can be
intrusive to family life (particularly when you are tweaking physical connectors), and you
can't use any server that needs a fan since the noise will often obscure the quieter music
and dialogue in films and TV dramas.
u Bedroom : This is the first and last place you spend each day, so having the machine on hand,
displaying news, videos, e-mails, and so on, can be highly optimal, if slightly unnerving at
times. It also has many of the benefits of the living room, as the (master) bedroom is normally
home to the second most important TV in the house. Consequently, it can suffer the same
problems with noise, in addition to those associated with randomly blinking lights in the night
and increased heat. 2
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