I got a referral to take a look a a three year old system. I walk in and the homeowner takes me to the "closet". I look at the rack and tell him it's not that bad. He then says "look around the corner", this is what is saw!!
In talking to his wife I ask what they listen to on the house system. She says "I listen to NPR on my phone" as she looking pretty sad.
I'm so swamped with my own stuff I'm not sure I want to take it on but I love a challenge and love to show people what things can/ should look like. He seems willing and understands it's a major undertaking. I really haven't thought about it yet, been putting out other fires!! I so wish I had a tech or two to just leave there and dig into it.

[Link: s1378.photobucket.com]

I would grab my label maker. Serial number each cable and the two end points(what they plug into). Then remove all cables.

Neatly place them back using the serial numbers of the cables and devices.

KOT

Wow. The other ends probably look the same. Cramped space too. Here is my recommendation. At the very least if you choose to take this on, don't start within 90 days of any holidays or birthdays of clients and their immediate family. Check the calendar and see where that leaves an opening.

Holy hand grenades, Batman!

I wouldn't want to give an estimate- they might want that to be the final price.

Any indication of who did this? Looks like they used 6' audio, IR and video cables when 3' or 18" would be long enough- I would tell them that if I were to do this job, they should go on vacation because the system won't be working for a while.

T&M with a HEALTHY deposit!

Assuming the homeowner paid for this setup. If they balk at your price, tell them they "paid someone to do it wrong - might as well pay someone to do it right".

Holy Crap! I would take it on as T&M with a possible completion date of whatever fits in your schedule. that is DAYS of work. sounds like nothing is working anyway so they arent missing anything if you take it down...

Leave the network in tact and cable distribution.

Make the deposit a weeks worth of labor and then use an equipment retainer. Midway through the week you should be able to give them an estimate of what it will take to get it back up and running.

Eh, I've seen worse.


It is bad though. I took on a job in which I didn't even know there was a plywood wall with some components mounted to it behind due to all the wiring in the way. It took me a week to take everything apart and label what I could. I probably sold myself short on the quote I gave, but it was early on for my business. This WILL take you time just to dismantle and figure out exactly what is what, so quote it accordingly. T&M is the best bet, and give them a range of $5,000 to $50,000. Give them an idea that this could very well be very expensive to fix.

Whenever I run into a mess like this, I go in head first and tear everything out right off the bat. Figure it out once you have all the crap out of your way. I understand trying to label and make sense of the mess first, but honestly it takes just as much or more time than figuring out what you have to work with after you rip all the spaghetti out. Especially if "nothing works". Then you have nothing to lose and can only make it better from there.

The first question- does it all work? If so, remove any unused cables and bundle or replace the ones that are too long, so they're not laying all over in chaos. Organize the power- that system has a lot of wall warts and they're all over- a couple of long rack-mounted power strips would help, rather than 6 port cheapo units laying on the floor and tucked into any available space. If space allows, mount a panel to the rear rack rails and attach the small boxes to it, with a hinge to let someone access the other equipment.

That's where I would start. Also, everything would get new labels on both ends.

And it looks like it has a URC RF base station, so downloading the program would let someone see all of the assignments for the cabling (other than all of the network).

Start by listing the components and determining how many of them are obsolete. That tells you how complete this mishmash CAN be and gives you a line on what new components are necessary.

This also tells you which cables you can just pull out of there and get rid of.

Next, check the URC programming to get a sense of if and how it's organized. If the programming is crazy or disorganized, abandon it. You might want to just abandon it anyway, rather than, for instance, analyze every damn macro to see what details might be a problem. Chances are a system physically organized this way will have programming that's equally difficult to cope with.

And yes, there's no way to estimate how much this will cost. I'd go out on a limb and tell them you ESTIMATE that after four days' labor (two guys for two days each), you'd be able to give them an equipment estimate and a very rough installation estimate. Remote programming would be separate, too.

By the way, that slide show, that starts by itself and has no obvious commands to stop it, is a pretty rude thing to spring on someone. I hope you don't provide information to your client this way! Now that I've played with it some, I see how to work it, but I'd still rather have several photographs that I can scroll through without them starting up on their own.

you guys are assuming the programming is even right.....

when I do a gut a rip EVERYTHING out, install my panels and din rail and trace/label as i re terminate each line. I leave nothing to chance, when a job is this bad there probably arent even labels and to sit there and label "Left right center etc etc" as you pull out the amps is a waste of time. Seriously, what gives you the idea that Left is even going to the left channel speaker.

Terminate everything to din panels and then once everything is labeled start tying in the equipment.

Where do you see URC?
I did see an old RTI processor in there.

Make a list of zones and sources/features etc. A list of what the client expects from the system.

Uninstall everything. Completely empty the rack and disconnect everything. Verify TV's and speakers etc are mounted properly.

Route all the cables to patch panels or distribution cans on the back wall where they come out of the ceiling.

Buy another rack or two so everything has space on a real rack shelf.

Get a lot of rack mount power distribution products. Half that mess is power cords and power supplies going to crappy extension cords.

Logically position things in the racks. Wire them up.

Its going to be painful $$$ to clean up that mess but it will save you and the client $$$ every time they want to fix or add in the future.