Structured Wiring – Smart-Home Cement
What is Structured Wiring and why is it important?
When people think about home entertainment or home automation their attention is usually on: how many inches their flat screen TV is or what touchscreen remote they’re going to buy or how many devices can they control at the push of a button, and rightly so! These are the things I’d be thinking about as they are the things I’ll be looking at or interacting with. Nonetheless, and no matter how disinterested or how unsexy cables are, the fact remains that structured wiring is the glue (or cement) that holds the Smart-Home together. To an extent the designer can only design around the benefits you want to enjoy and you can only specify the benefits you know about. Knowing a bit about the wiring infrastructure will help you be more clear about what you want to achieve and thus also help you provide a clearer brief to your custom designer/installer, ensuring that together, you come up with a future-proof solution that will be technologically sound for years to come. To begin with, it will be helpful to know a little about the different cables:
Cable Types
Cat2 / 3
Used for Telco Services, by BT and in home distribution
Cat 5e / 6 / 7
Data Cable for computer networks
In use for over 15 years
100 / RG Series Coax
TV distribution cable
Passes Satellite, DTT, Cable, Analogue, FM and DAB Signals
Stranded Pairs
Speaker Cable for audio
Broad range of qualities, from £0.10 per Mtr to £100 per Mtr
Wiring Infrastructures
There are two main categories of wiring infrastructure, hybrid and dedicated:
Hybrid structure
A hybrid structure uses a mix of cable types to distribute the services and signals throughout a property. A hybrid structure will typically use Cat 5e for data and telephone services, coax for TV and satellite distribution, Cat 5e for line level audio and either speaker cable or Cat 5e for basic speaker level connection.
Dedicated structure
For the most flexible solution a dedicated system uses a single cable type to distribute the services and signals throughout a property, with the outlet terminated as a generic RJ45 outlet. Cost and expertise required for a dedicated structure can be significantly more demanding however. Cat 5e based dedicated structure are great solutions for data, telco and basic audio services, but TV/FM distribution requires specialist electronics at the central hub, and satellite distribution is not possible. Cat 5e cable does not have the bandwidth to pass any UHF TV signals, but it can be used to distribute single composite AV signals to an outlet.
Cat 7 is the latest, high-end cable being adopted for dedicated systems. The major advantage of using a Cat 7 based system is that the cable can pass the full TV signal without the need for expensive central electronics. Cat 7 does however, still require dongles for format conversion and again, satellite TV distribution is not possible.
As with the hardware, which wiring structure is right for you will depend on the parameters which are important to you: cost, ease of use, concealment, fidelity, functionality, aesthetics, time-scale all should be considered. Express your priorities to the custom designer and he will know which is more appropriate, ask him/her to explain the wiring structure to you and having some basic knowledge will allow you to quiz them on specific areas. Its always nice to keep them on their toes!
