Wall plates - the installation

Decided to go through and fit off some of the wires with the connectors and wall plates. The starter kit provides everything you need and includes some pretty decent instructions, however I've also taken my own photos (below). Hope you find them useful!

The above picture shows the hole cut in the wall where the hanger was located prior to the plaster going on. If you are putting these in yourself, make sure you put marks on the floor so you can find the right spot - all of our hangars were centred 300mm in height from the floor.

Here's a close up of the markings on the LexCom cable

After pulling the cable through, strip off 5 cm of the outer cover - revealing the shield.

Pull the shield back.

Separate the 3 pairs of wires

Strip off the shield from each pair of wires

The connector comes in two parts

Slide the cover over the cable and push it past the braid

Open the connector - note the colour coding on one side

... and the colour coding on the other side

Push the connector over the coloured wires

Now seat each of the wires into the correct slot, making sure to follow the guide pins

Another view

Now firmly close the connector - push hard until you hear the click. The connector automatically cuts into the wires with the pins.

Trim the excess wire close to the connector

Trim the braid (Shielding) and slide the cap on until it clicks into place

This shot shows the connector installed in the wall plate, before the cover plate is clipped in place.

Wall plate cover in place

The next series of photos show what I did with the wall plates.

Wall plate come with one small plastic pop-off, under which you can put an identification number. I printed numbers for each port using the label maker.

You can see the small place for the number above the connector hole

Numbers in place on the 4-port wall plate

Numbers on the two port plate - note the adapter which goes into each plate. The connector clips into the adapter.

Each of the wall plates also has a cover plate which is clipped onto the wall plate after the wall plate is screwed onto the wall.

Starter Kit

The next step in the LexCom installation was to purchase the distribution panel - the 22 inch panel can accommodate up to 26 points, the 14 inch panel can accommodate up to 18 points.

Given that we have now wired 24 points around the house, the 22 inch panel is the go!

It's possible to purchase all components separately, however LexCom do provide a starter kit which makes it a little easier to get the core components.

Cost of the starter kit (RRP retail) is a whopping $2048 including GST. Fortunately, my sparkie has a trade account with the wholesaler and I was able to buy the kit at trade price.

Starter kit components:

Starter Kit Box

Starter Kit Contents

Wiring

This blog post goes through the process we went through to pre-wire the new home we are building with the LexCom cable.

Important note: PDL will provide a warranty providing the network is installed and certified by a licensed installer.

First of all, we bought a roll of the LexCom CAT7 cable from an electrical wholesales. The drum of cable is 300 metres long, it's part number is LCHC300, and it cost a whopping $748 including GST. That was the full retail cost from one particular supplier as at March, 2008. If you are using an electrical installer or authorised LexCom installer, then the installer may pass on a trade discount.

Why is it so expensive? Because it's a high capacity double shielded cable, with a frequency range of up to 900 MHz, that exceeds the frequency currently used for free to air analogue and digital television. The data components exceed the current CAT 6 data specification. So now you know!

So, armed with our drum of the world's most expensive cable and the wiring diagram we put together, we started running cables from the place where our central distribution panel would be installed, to each of the rooms where we wanted outlets.

White cables are the LexCom cables

Distribution box will be in this cupboard

Phone, TV and LexCom cables all come in here

The cabling took half a day, and consisted of running cables from the distribution point to all the rooms. We even put one into the al fresco area, in case we decide to put a TV out there at some stage.

Each cable was numbered (we wrote in pen on each end of the cable) and the wall fixings were installed where the cables will be terminated on a wall plate:

The picture above shows three LexCom cables through the hanger - the face plate will eventually be screwed into the hanger.

As well as writing on the actual cables, we also marked the concrete or timber floor with the numbers to make it easier to find the cables after the plaster is on. The centre of each hanger is 300mm from the floor, and is marked with a line (as shown below)


The only exception to the 300mm rule is for a cable which might be higher for a wall mounted TV, or the al fresco cable which will be in the ceiling.

Planning your network

The first thing you need to do after deciding that the LexCom system is the right one for you, is to plan out where everything is going to go.

You can check the Technical Installation Guide elswhere on this site, but a few points are list below which may help:

• Where are you going to install your distribution panel?
• Plan to run your phone line, data line and TV antenna into your panel.
• Which rooms do you want the telephone patched into (not many in our case, as we have some cordless handsets we will use)
• Which rooms do you want data available in? Will you need more than one data port (for example, a network printer and a PC)?
• Which rooms do you want TV or video signals available in?

Bear in mind that any particular line can be switched for a different purpose as required. For example, if you have two lines running to a room, you can use one for data and one for phone, or one for data and one for video, etc.

We are building the Porter Davis Cremorne 41, which is a double storey home. The plans we drew up for the network points are provided below:



The distribution box lives on the first floor, to the rear of the house (there's an empty bulkhead net to a wardrobe which can be used to house the panel.

In our network there are 11 points downstairs, and 12 points upstairs - making a total of 24 points. The 22 inch cabinet can accomodate up to 26 points, so that's what will go in.

Hope this helps!

Lexcom network overview

Q: What is the Lexcom Home Network?
A: The Lexcom Home Network is a cabling system which allows video, phone, audio and data to be distributed to any room in your home.

Q: Why is is different to systems such as Starserve?
A: Lexcom is different because only one type of cable is used. When wiring the house the same cable is used for every outlet, regardless of what the outlet will be used for.

Lexcom Home Network Description

The Lexcom home network consists of a number of items:

Distribution Panel: The distribution panel is the central point where all the cables from each room are run into, and connected. The distribution panel looks like a small cupboard, and is used to link or "patch" a particular room outlet to a particular function.

The distribution panel requires mains power, as some of the components installed in the panel need to have power.

The panel also comes in different sizes, depending on how many room outlets you need.

Distribution Panel

Cable: The Lexcom cable is run from the distribution panel to an outlet in the room. If you have more than one outlet in a room, then you have more than one cable running from the panel to the room. The cable is very high quality Category 7 data cable.

Lexcom Cable

Outlets: The outlets are the points you will see in the room. There are face plates which allow you to have one, two, three or four outlets.

3 outlets in a wall plate

Active components: These are the modules which are housed in the distribution panel. Active components include items such as data hubs, video converters and so on. These items will usually take one signal in, and allow it to be "split" or modified in some way to that it can be distributed to multiple outlets.

Video Splitter Component

Room Components: These are the components which live in a room, and are connected to an outlet. The simplest room component is a cable, and there are some room based components which are much more complicated. We will get to them later!

Connector Lead



Room Modulator

The combination of all of the above items provides a network in which any service you need can be distributed to any outlet you need.

Welcome!

Welcome to this new site. This is site has been set up to follow the progress of the PDL Lexcom Home Network install, as a partner blog to the main home building site:

http://www.perryr.com/homebog

The Lexcom network is a home network which allows you to run audio, video, phone or data to any room in the house. The different between Lexcom and other home networks is that everything runs across a data cable. That's right - if you run two points to a room, you can use one for data and one for video, and change the use of them at any time.


This means, no running of CAT5 cable and coax and phone line to every room. That's the main reason I was interested in it. More details coming up soon!