Does anyone know of a system currently available where the control pad works on RG6 without any additional wires? The alarm guy wired up the house 10 years ago and thats what he used. The house was wired for volume controls as well and I'm planning on using Zon Audio unless another viable alternative is brought up here. And no, it is not possible to get to the wires and run anything else, no attic and no basement and a relatively small budget.

McIntosh makes one, I think. No, it's not in anyone's budget.

Try Matrix Audio, www.matrixaudiodesigns.com
Their system uses speaker wire for control as well.

They stopped making it about 6 years ago, and it only worked with their own gear. Worked pretty well.

If you power the KPs locally, you could use pretty much anything - Elan, Xantech, Crestron, etc...

I thought of local power but it would tip the budget. Crestron over RG6 on a small budget, I wish. The only systems I know of that will control over the speaker wires are Zon Audio and Matrix Audio but I haven't installed either. Anybody out there with experience with these products? How's the reliabity?

Matrix works very well indeed, although it too is a tad on the pricey side.

You are probably talking about that sony system that used rg-6 to keypads (forgot model number) all i can tell you is run. Run for your life that is the biggest piece of junk!!!!! I know they have since quit making it but the major problem with it was that as the cable companies added channels to there line up it took up the badwidth where the keypad system was operating. No way around it you will have to probably get out the drywall saw.

No, I am not talking about that Sony system but you made me laugh because I worked on them a few times and when they worked they were way ahead of their time. As we know they didn't like to work. I thought that Russound once made a system but I am looking for feedback on Zon and Matrix at this point.

Well, here is a weird approach!

That RG-6 would pass an IR signal very nicely. Niles specs shielded cable for its systems, and Xantech's low impedance guarantees that it will work well with RG-6. And IR frequencies are too low for the 75 ohm transmission impedance to have much effect.

So how do you get your power to the keypads? You could power each one at the keypad, or....

A power supply's DC voltages have to have a really low AC impedance, hot to ground, to avoid RF noise getting into circuits and to guarantee that a current pulse can be pulled from the supply. That means that you could connect the shield of the RG-6 to the +12 volts of the IR system; the low impedance of +12 volts to ground will ensure that noise does not get into the hot lead.

And the ground? Connect it to the house's power ground after being sure you have good power grounding! The only AC current that flows in the house's ground flows when there is an accidental grounding or due to capacitive coupling of the 120 volts to the third pin of a device's power plug, so there is little chance (but still chance) that noise will come in this way. If noise does come in, it will likely be too LOW in frequency to affect the system.

Using local power for keypads would add increased expense both by adding power supplies and additional labor to the small budget. There don't seem to be any rg6 keypads so I am concentrating on two systems that control over the speaker wire from home base to the keypad location. The Zon Audio and the Matrix do this very differently but don't seem to widely used. I am just looking for some feedback from the field. I am leaning towards the Zon Audio

I don't like to use them, but it is possible to find RF IR repeaters. They are too fragile for my taste because they are rather crude and lots of devices use the same frequency band. (Your neighbor may have or acquire a device that interferes with you.) Also, the range can be limited.

Some Phillips Pronto models have RF accessories.

Not really Ernie...... Xantech actually makes an adaptor to do just this.. the INJ94. You could put one of these at each end of the coax and thennot have to worry so much about the conections and interference.