Scratch Build – In Progress [Bit-Tech/Intel NUC Competition] Tooobular, with 3 ooo's --Finished, Pg. 4--

Nice pencil holder.
That black acrylic is seriously saxy, and next to the stainless. Yum Yum!

 

Thank you, Your Highness Sir. I was thinking the tiny shiny screws on black would look good. I'm glad someone else approves.

 

Tooo much ooo. -make brain hurt...


-***, wiring. Many of you know it's not my most artistic ability, and most of my work in this area is described as a "nest" or "snarl."
To power the LEDs, I'm hijacking the USB header on the motherboard. I dug out a USB plug from one of the many ritual sacrifices/dead systems I recycle.

-White wires go to the power switch. I have wires for the power and HD activity LEDs to the left. The USB plug only has wires for the +5 volt and ground. You can see why I chopped one side of the USB plug smooth here too. It makes a good reference for how the plug goes.

-Apologies for the poor light. This station could use a better lamp 'n stuff. This is wiring session ONE. There were several since I decided 2 LEDs on a 5v were not bright enough.

- The word "speaker" has been scratched off the KK header. Rather than use new pins and torture myself trying to get them crimped, I re-solder just past the crimp on a salvaged pin.

-I also found this handy devil in the box-O-puterguts. These male KK pins will be used so the LEDs in the case "lid" can be disconnected. -Although I've since added an antenna wire that can't be quickly disconnected.

-Here's the female end of that connection. You can see the ugly grinding on the USB port inside. I have one LED buried in the top layer, and one in the middle of the L bracket.

-I'm matching up the male/female connections like this.

-Wires for lighting the base panel. The pipe wrench make a handy mini vice. I just slide it forward and back on the vinyl to loosen/tighten.

-Well the wiring is successful, but they are kinda weak. The blue glow is the power indicator on the motherboard. -Yep, a micro surface mount LED is brighter than the 4 USB powered LEDs.

-I can KIND OF see the red, it's all but invisible to the camera.

-I wired that switch up with some contortionist soldering.

-I got in a bit of a hurry, and glued the wires down. I ended up ripping half of them out later and re-doing them. The spot around the fan hole is critical for space since there's barely any room under the heatsink.
3 updates to go...

 

Looking awesome cheaps.

 

^ Indeed it does!

 

Thanks. I wasn't expecting much positive response from my internal work, though. -Possibly some booing, but nothing positive.

 

geez cheapskate, i don't check you log for about 2 weeks and its almost done, nice work! I see you also have a handy cnc helper The wiring looks good to me, not easy to do tiny soldering jobbies

 

Back to 3 ooo's because of the recession...

@Ace -My wiring always looks good, at first...
Read on:
Oh, no! #12 wasn't written out in advance!

-So that pretty wiring job in the previous post was TOO pretty. So after gluing and painting it I tore it apart the very next day and re-did some things.

-Here I'm rewiring the LEDs single with a 120 ohm resistor.

-What is that? It's been too long to remember. I'm pretty sure it was ripped out and re-done too.

-Yep. My memory is at least that good. There's only one light. The new one is dead, so I redid for a third time. I couldn't get many pics of the lights that didn't look like black with a red thing.

-At least the night light plug plan worked, however, I started noticing hot spots at this point. The LEDs are shining through the black. I fixed it later, (sort of,) with some aluminum foil stuffed in the bottom of the holes.

-Gotta dress up the fan and heatsink a bit. Some black label tape for the fan, and I removed the sticky duct over the heatsink. I figured that would catch dust like crazy being all sticky.

-I replaced it with hobby foam, (Yeah, Insulation on a heat sink.)

-I put more foam on the sides so the air would go out the back.

-Where did you hide the invasion plans? -er.. Here I'm gluing the cover on.

-RE-soldering that pesky LED. Here you can see his 120 Ohm trouser bulge. I think the red stripe explains what went wrong perfectly. Irony- I just burned up GG's pump doing the same thing.

-OW! Yeah, That works now.

-More of the re-wiring. I just clipped the wire and dropped the resistor in the gap.

-Looks like a snarl coming on. There's a wad of wires in that corner to keep them from plugging the holes.


-nice teaser pic. I was greasing up with Novus polish to get rid of the white scratches in the sanding. I settled on Pledge furniture polish for giving it the right look.

-I finally got some light in that outer layer, but it's just the single hot spot. There isn't enough time, space, and voltage to do more.
...Didn't want a Christmas tree anyway.

-That black spot is the case. The red spots are the lights.

-And THAT's a hot spot.

-I got a little of it shining out the back.

 

Turtally Turbuler -ooo privileges revoked


-Right, I needed some shortened screws for decoration in the base. Since I had the tile saw out it made the job quicker.

-I set the newly shortened screws with a little bit of silicone glue. If they need to come out, just push them out from the back.

-Lucky me already had a chunk of delrin mounted to a pallet. I'm going with delrin for the monitor mount since the screw holes I will need could easily break with anything else.

-Gah! I didn't measure the size of the thing on the back of the screen very well. Delrin is hell to sand, but it cuts with a knife very easily. I whittled the inside out a bit until it sat flush.

-Next up I had to correct the mounting holes I milled. The original set mounts the screen upside down.

-You know the routine by now. Delrin mills and drills like HDPE. It's very nice to work with, and the chips are soft and fluffy. It's a weird, almost oily feel to the cuttings.

-Here I'm using paint stirring sticks to level the top of the bracket in the drill press.

-and I put a countersink on the holes ON THE WRONG SIDE. Boy, I was really having a day. This doesn't show since it's under the bracket. I'm shocked I got the right holes.

-There's the bracket parts assembled. No matter what I did, I couldn't get the color of the delrin to match the plexiglas. Even oiled up, it kept a slightly grey tint.

-I drilled some holes to fit long 4-40 screws into the original screen mounting post.

-You can see all the way through the assembly. That's a good start.

-There is always something laying around to help you with sanding holes.

-Wrapped up for travel, but you get the basic idea. I had some tilt issues with the monitor even with the square insides on my mount, so there was an added bit of silicone glue added to keep it from flopping around.

-The computer Gods demand a sacrifice! I needed a Wifi antenna, so I dismantled a dead laptop for one. I should have done this in the garage. The insides of this one smelled like wet cat and FEET. The clacking sound of picking up screws with a vacuum is fun, though.

-I did all that dismantling of the main body just to get the connector and monitor lid free. The ultimate destination is this big sheet of mylar foil behind the screen. I know nothing about this stuff, but I'm pretty certain this is the antenna part. I mean, hey, the wires are kinda connected to it and stuff.

-OK, I have the wire part. It's about 2 feet long, but I have one.

-Some of the foil went into the lid. The wires were connected to either end like the laptop, only MUCH smaller. I have some insulation material from the inside of power supplies laying in wait to go on top.

-I just happened to have some insulation in matte black to hide all that internal shiny. I may regret this, but I used some glue that is essentially concentrated sticky gunk they use on tape. It was pretty goopy, but that's what stuck. Nothing else would.

-After a few Linux distros and a lot of terminal sessions that ended with "installation failed" on the tablet driver, I bought Windows 8. 7 didn't fit on the drive. Here it looks great, right? I had the screen calibrated and everything.

-Well, as soon as I booted up with only the touchscreen, everything changed. I should have done some reading up or something. (Wait? me read?) It seems that despite being designed for tablets and smartphones, there's a minimum resolution of 1024x768. The touchscreen calibration went to hell without the primary monitor too, and despite having the keypad fit earlier, it was f***huge on this screen.
...Yeah, fun.

 

Loving this now that I can really see what it looks like!

 

That looks really cool man. I look forward to see how it's mounted. Well done

 

Yeah looking really good, even got a glimpse of it assembled Those screens are a nightmare to set up

 

Thanks everyone.
@Combatus - Came, went.
@Boorach - What, now? -I should tell you the next post is final pics, then.
@Darkwisdom - Oop. I did kinda gloss over that part. I pretty much screwed a 4-40 screw into the original mount bushing and that was it.
@Asouter - Aside from about 12 admin permission blocks from windows during the driver loading? The rest was simple, getting it to work as a stand-alone input device, however...

 

That's one crazy design man!! Looking real good, cant weeeeait for finals man...

 

Looking really cool so far, c'mon giiit tooo iiit and post some more updates!

 

Haha cheapskate! Crazy design and work as always. Good job!

 

Thanks.
@QuizKid -Yes, you can.
@MakiRole - Don't think you can bully me. The pics aren't even off the camera yet.

 

Finished, Tooobed, Ooo'd.

Then again... My other log is getting backed up 'cause of this. How about a pic dump?



Too much Pledge. The sucker was to black and shiny to photograph.



Any dupes yet?
Edit:Yes.

Nice can of glue you have there...



Danged closeups came out better than the tripod pics.

ooop, fingerprint

 

Looks great. Nice work!