Amazing work Will on the project. It looks great. For those of you wondering on how to get that Serener power supply and have the connections you need, you may want to try an alternative PSU that may make life easier. Just do a google search for PicoPSU-120. Will, could you further elaborate on how you wired the RGB LEDs? As I understand it, LEDs have + and - ports that need to be connected.
Yup, I was not sure if I could post links so I did not. I got this one: http://www.mini-box.com/picoPSU-120-102W-power-kit
That I ended up buying from Performance Pc's for around $120. Things have been so crazy I haven't bother configuring it yet! I got those sata power connectors in the form of molex to sata adapters - and took them apart. I usually get them off e-bay, try searching "sata power 90" (as in 90 degrees). The only real way to get the right ones is by looking at the pictures I've found. Thanks. Actually, I saw that pico psu a while ago and thought it was awesome. However for this application it would have made no sense at all. The entire point of that thing is to plug into the motherboard directed. I was using a psu and not using it with a motherboard at all. For the RGB's, they had a common + port and a - for r g and b. The highpoint has pinouts for just the - and then I grabbed a free + line from the psu. The whole power situation was one of those "this seems like it will work" sort of things, so when the system booted up perfectly on its first time, i was actually a bit surprised. Oh, and I don't know it this helps anything, but Newegg just released a video I did for them with a bit more info. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Fs4jQh2iCQ Today it was the 83rd most viewed tech video in Canada! lol
Works out with this I think: http://www.frozencpu.com/products/3...20-pin_Power_Supply_Jump_Start_Connector.html
What was the approximate cost of this project? I'm considering building a NAS server myself with a mini itx board to run more server apps.
I'd say about $2,500 and a whole lot of labor... in his newegg video he said it took him about 100 hours...
I suppose it would work but it wouldn't really make sense to do that. The entire point of that psu is it mounts directly to the motherboard, by using that thing It would have nothing to mount it by. Overall I was doing something that non of these sort of psu's are really designed for, I'm pretty confident the serener was the best choice. The components would have ended up costing just under $2000. Most of that was hard disks obviously, and the 2tb drives can now be had for about $30 less each.
Most brilliant build! Very creative. I wish I had the skills (and workshop!) to make this. I have to stick to standard cases I'm afraid... Could you elaborate more on the activity/fault LED's you put in the box? I'm not an electronics wizard, but know how to hold a soldering iron and I'm sort of handy. I have the same RR2860 card as you used and I'd like to make a LED front panel in my case. HighPoint doesn't provide much info to make this and I don't know much about electronics. I looked at a wiring example and I figured out that pin 2 (for that RGB LED anyway) is ground (where can I get that from safely?). Pin 3 is Green, so that goes to pin A1-1 (for drive 1); Pin 1 is Red, so that goes to pin F1-1 for fault detection. What do I do with the other pin? And I think I need some resistors... which values? I'd appreciate some help on this one. If I know what parts I need and where everything goes, I think I can manage to put it together.
Sweet project mate, looks excellent too, I've thought about mounting hdd's similar to the way you have, good way to stack a load of em while saving on space . +rep
The OP definitely has a flair for video production. I've never seen anything that even comes close to it in modding. I don't know if I'd have the patience to set up and continually change around video cameras like that, much less the amount of video editing it must have taken. Very cool build. Shame has hasn't posted here since July though.
I was also wondering about the LED-setup. What cable-connection did you use on the card (I imagine you didn't solder them on the card)? What LED did you use (bipolar common-cathode? Common anode?). Is it 3.3V and some resistors? How did you do the wiring to the LEDs/resistors and the card? Pictures of the wiring and schedule?
What about the OS? All is very nice and impresive. I'd like to build one myself. Any word on what you used for the OS? also not totally clear is the serial display... how did you configure it?
