[$] Whole-house audio with free hardware and software
The Black Forest fire destroyed over 500 Colorado houses in June 2013; one of those belonged to longtime Debian developer Bdale Garbee. As he reported during his talk at the 2016 linux.conf.au Multimedia and Music miniconf, the house has been redesigned and rebuilt and life is generally better now. Part of the rebuilding process included the incorporation of a whole-house audio system; naturally, Bdale took a unique approach to that task. His talk showed what can be done when one starts from scratch — and doesn't mind designing a circuit board along the way.