Electronics First ever - "Bubbler" mod & tons of Electronics

At least as far as I know, this has never been done before. It looks great, and is amazingly quiet considering all the bubble activity and the pump. It is about 90% done - full info and details are on my site at www.CaseModVideos.com



Here are a few of the components:

Bubblers - (3 of them: 2 side panels and 1 cylinder). To make the side panels, I created 2 watertight boxes (6 x 15 x 1/2") from acrylic and a lot of trial and error using Weld-On #4. The panels are attached to the bay panels using velcro so that they can be easily removed. I also made a tall acrylic cylinder for the center of my clear acrylic PC. Everything is tightly sealed. I included exhaust tubing for all the bubblers which I used two "T" fittings so that all 3 of them merge into one tube that runs out the back - this way the water vapor coming out of the top of the bubblers does not get into the case and cause corrosion.

To force air into the 3 bubblers while keeping water from drawing back out - I added a sealed bulkhead to the bottom side of each and a 1-way check valve - this was the most difficult part of the entire mod - especially to make it NOT leak !!! I connected aquarium airstones to the bulkhead, and they stay at the bottom, and send up a wall of bubbles. I then ran in aquarium tubing from the outside, sealed it with epoxy, and connected the tubes to a set of lighted gang valves to control the air flow amount. The gang valves hang on the back top of the left panel so that I can control the air flow to any given bubbler from outside the PC. The gang valves have air pumped into them by a "Whisper 30" aquarium pump, which requires 120vAC so I drilled holes into my PSU, soldered wires directly into the 120vAC input lugs, and ran the wiring to a switch mounted on the front of my PC. I then ran another set of wires back to the pump.

EL wires on a Sequencer - when done - the cylinder bubbler will be wrapped with 4 different colored EL-wires, barber-pole style, and then will be sequnced to turn on one at a time using a Sunbeam Lightbus which sits in the front bay and allows you to control the pattern, or light them up with no flashing.

Lumindisk - that lightning thing on the bottom is a 6" "Luminglas" plasma disk - there in one on the right too, just inside the bubbler panels.

Extra Power Switches - since this is a very "busy" theme I included three extra power switches on the front (UV Lighting, Colored Lighting, and the Bubbler Pump system) - so that I can shut down major areas of lighting and activity when I just want some quiet.

Power RGB LED's with color change Fader controllers - included 2 types of RGB power LED controllers (Clive's and FOP's). My site has an extreme amount of detail on these controllers, and the various power RGB LED's that you can use with them ( see the "Tech" section). I mounted these in a black box and set them near the front, under the hard drive. A set of illuminated pushbuttons are mounted on the left side panel with quick disconnects for the wiring. They control the sequences for the two RGB controllers and power LED's - they, in turn light the bubbler panels (from the top by two custom made power RGB LED strips) and the cylinder (lit from below by a Lamina BL-4000 RGB power LED on a heat sink).

Plasma Ball - I wanted this fully on top, and not just a third of it peeking out as I have seen others so. I was able to do this by taking a dreamel, cutting a line in the collar, and popping out the globe. Then I drilled a 3" hole and stuck the collor through from underneath and popped the globe back in from above.

LED chasers - mounted on the front panel - 2 types: DonnieJ's 8-cherry drop LED's on top, and KnightLight's 16-blue LED chaser on the bottom. I can control the various sequences by lighted pushbuttons that I mount on the left panel.

Scrolling LED sign - this was made from an LED belt buckle, by craking off the buckle hinge and mounting it with 3M mounting tape, to the floppy drive. I rarely use the drive, but if I need it I just pop out the LED sign.

Here is a full-size image of the case describing the items I have added - I still have some more items to add, too:

 

Wow, thats...interesting. A bit crowded for my liking, but some great ideas in there.

 

it is indeed ... interesting, but like above far too busy. looks like a crazy c-level 80's sci-fi movie prop

 

LOL that is certainly interesting. Wayyyyyyyyy too busy for my tastes.

 

I think it's far too busy for anyone who actually has eyes tbh...

 

WOAH! That's kwalitee!

Acid trip for geeks.

 

Great stuff i like it a lot, excellent website too

 

OMG! I just saw the video clips on the site you linked to, and all I can say is . Seriously though, it is a bit busy, but you were obviously aware of that. I'd really hate to sleep in the same room as this box though!

 

Hence the switches.

 

He had the forethought to put switches to shutdown certain area to 'change the mood'. That is key to a good mod.

As always, what a mod is in the end is what the modder wants it to be, not the croud appeal. Very good job. Quality work done here.





Final thoughts: "Busy is as busy does" - Gump

 

Bit over the top for me, but I do like the bubbles... ok I'm wierd *chases after floating bubbles*

 

Actually, this IS NOT the first mod with a bubbler. I did that well over a year ago with this system:



More pictures here.

Still, nice mod - if a little "bright".

 

Nice, if you like that sort of thing What sort of power does it need to run all of that stuff?

 

I'd say it looks well done (certainly tons of electronics) but as has been said it is very garish in terms of the flashing lights etc. Individually many parts of it look nice, but combined all at once it's overloading for the senses I think that it would be pretty neat however if you could take those bubblers and make a reservoir out of them. Of course you can't have air bubbles in it so you might have to place another water filled cylinder around the res to form a place for the bubbles. Just a thought.

 

Yes it is over the top, too much lights, etc - but that was on purpose because I made it just to show the various items and DIY ideas from my website. It is basically just a "hey, here is a bunch of things you can do" case mod. But I did add several extra power switches to shut down sections of the extra lights, the bubblers, etc - and just use it for quiet work, surfing the web, etc. - without all the action.

As to the question on Power . . . actually I was also worried about. I bought a second supply, but when I measured this system with all the stuff ON at the same time (not including the MOBO and hard drive), it was only about 4 amps, which is 48 watts. That is a lot of current & power, but the aveage PSA puts out about 450 to 500 watts, and the typical system only uses about 1/2 to 2/3 of that, so I did not need the 2nd PSU after all.

 

Question...insn't that Lumiglas a little dangerous to put near a computer? I have a Luminglas, but I found that when I put my alarm clock next to it, the clock went haywire.

 

Love all the info and links you have laid out on your site!! Very good stuff indeed

 

There's a bunch of water mods on GideonTech.

 

Looks cool, very busy, good job.

 

That's an epileptic seizure in a box!