Wiring a home used to be a lot easier. 230V cabling would be laid in the newly built home, to which a few sockets, power points and switches were connected. At most, there was also a telephone socket in the wall and a coax cable connection for the television. A small distribution board was sufficient to protect a few socket circuits and lighting circuits. The installation was ready.

That is no longer the case today. With the arrival of digital TV, integrated home systems, telephone over Internet (VOIP) and many other technological marvels of this day and age, the number of networks in the home has increased sharply. Generally, one telephone connection is no longer enough; we want to have a connection in almost every room. This is also the case for the television. In addition to the flat-screen TV in the living room, we also want a television in the bedrooms and kitchen. We want to be able to watch movies stored on our computer on all the TVs in the house. Furthermore, we have a desktop computer and a few portable computers which must be connected to the Internet. We would also like to hear our entire MP3 collection on the audio system in the living room and the audio equipment in the children’s rooms. In the bathroom and kitchen, we want to listen to Internet radio.

The expansion of the various networks in the home is enormous. It is then obvious that we are looking for solutions for dealing with such network cabling in the home in a well thought out way. Bticino proposes a solution where the data and TV cables throughout the home are connected in a star topology to a separate multimedia distribution board. The star centre is therefore a distribution board where the active and passive devices needed to distribute the data, TV and telephone signals are installed. The Bticino network switches and the modules for data, internet, telephone and TV can be installed in any DIN-Rail cabinet.

All incoming Cat5/6 cables are connected to an RJ45 outlet in this distribution board. These outlets are mounted on the DIN rail. Depending on the residents’ desires, one or more active components can also be incorporated into the multimedia distribution board, e.g., video distributors, a hub or router, a telephone distributor, etc. An outlet in a certain room can be connected to any active component by using patch cables. In practice, this means that, for example, an unused outlet in the children’s room can be connected to the local telephone exchange, because you now want to use a fixed telephone there as well. If you decide to take the telephone out of the room, but you still want a data connection for the computer or a TV connection, then it can be done in no time at all in the patch cabinet.

Home Networks Catalogue

Flatwall Catalogue

Bticino Website

Flatwall Presentation

Flatwall Installation

Showroom: Future Habitats, Upper Constitution Steet, Mosta MST 9051, Malta