My current job is located near a Goodwill thrift store, so I head by there on my lunch break at least once a week. Never know what you'll find, and this past week I came across this. It's a plastic Thermos brand Hot Wheels lunchbox circa 2007. Black plastic, white handle, but no Thermos inside. As soon as I saw it, I knew it would become a computer case, so I bought it, brought it home, and started digging in the parts box. Grabbed one of my Via C3 embedded 3.5" boards, a cheap 4GB compact flash card, a small 5V, 8A power supply, and my exacto knife and files. Didn't take long, and I had it done. Board on the left, power supply on the right. Quite a bit of space inside, isn't there? Power plug side. And the ports, which I'm not really happy with but they're functional. The exacto got out of control a couple times and the files really don't do much on the plastic. I didn't bother with a power switch since this is going to be a Smoothwall box. Wasn't going to sacrifice a good ATX or Pico-PSU when this system should be always running anyway. Same reason there's no power switch, easy enough to yank the power cord when I need it off. I don't really need another firewall, but it was fun to build and when I get bored I can dump it onto Ebay. My total cost is under $100, so I might even make a few bucks if I sell.
Looks great. Wish the ports were easier to make. Are you going to add any ventilation, or are you just going to prop the lid open a bit?
So far it runs pretty cool, but I will be putting a few vent holes on the bottom and in the handle area. Should be able to get a bit of convection that way. The UPS it's plugged into claims it's using about 11 watts of power, so there's really not a lot of heat to deal with. Biggest issue with getting the ports right is that the plastic is pretty soft. Just gums up my files and has a tendency to "tear" when cutting it with the exacto. The flash on the camera also brings out the bad really well. I was tempted to make an aluminum plate, and I still might go back and do that if I get motivated enough. Much more comfortable working with aluminum, and I get much better results. This one took forever, and I'm a bit biased, but I still think it looks like a factory piece.
In the last picture of the aluminum work, you have a board with component outputs. Which board is it? I like the lunchbox but the aluminum work is very nice. John
So even with the parts you used the cost was under $100? Or did you have the parts laying around? I want to build something like this for my car so did you get the parts from some website?
that looks excelent! Are you doing to dust the sides with some black spray to cover up the scuffs etc? Or just give it that authentic "worn" look? grerat wee case you got going there mate
The aluminum one uses a Commell LS-371 Mobile Core 2 Duo board with a 2GHz T7200. Different class of system, and a way different price range. That board currently runs around $400 US without CPU. More pics of that system here The board in this one is an Avalue ECM-3610 that was in a "Pay By Touch" Kiosk system I found very cheap on Ebay. If you were to buy the board new, you'd be looking at the $300 US range, so not much cheaper but it does come with the CPU. I was able to grab three of the Kiosk systems for very cheap, so I have project supplies for a while. The power supply in the lunchbox is from another embedded system I had bought to steal the motherboard from. That board ended up in this. Anyway, it's a 5 volt, 8 amp power supply, very similar to what's found in a lot of external 5.25" hard drive cases. Not going to try to touch up the lunchbox. Most of the scuffs and scratches only show in the picture due to the camera flash.
What did you search for to find it? I'm looking for the same thing. Any idea where to get small motherboards? I don't need anything high powered I'm just looking for something that can run like linux or windows me or xp or something really low level just something I can write some code for.
I think I found this one by searching for XP Embedded, but SBC or Single Board Computer will bring them up on Ebay as well. The ones I prefer are 3.5" embedded, ~100mm x 140mm or roughly the size of a 3.5" hard drive.
Awesome. SBC == Able to be run upon opening? I'm sorry this is my first time hearing of these. Does the name actually mean they can be used just as is? Thanks, Alex Or is it just a board where all of the stuff is embedded?
SBC = Single Board Computer, one small board with all the stuff you'd expect on a full-size ATX board. Just think of them as another form factor smaller than mini-ITX. Most just need memory and a hard drive to have a working system. Here's a couple sites to see what kind of boards are being made in the 3.5" embedded size. http://www.bwi.com/category/87 http://www.avalue.com.tw/embedded_board_computer/35_single_board_computer.cfm http://www.portwell.com/products/embedded.asp#ECX http://www.icpamerica.com/products/single_board_computers/3_5_WAFER/default.html
