Small Form Factor Project Lament II - Hellusion (scratch build)

This is my first ever computer modification where I designed and built the entire case from scratch, formerly titled "Hell's Illusion" this mod took over a year to create and is the sequel to my HellRaiser Cenobite PC mod. My idea came from an 'Art Bank' that I had a long time ago with an airplane floating in it, the following picture shows the cube version of the same bank... which actually illustrates things better.



I obsessed over how to build it and make everything fit for months before I ever set pencil to paper, I wanted to keep it as small as possible and still hide a monitor and all the other computer bits inside. The original pencil sketch for the mod design is shown below, the placement of some parts and final size differ but the finished work still looks almost identical to the original idea sketch.



The pencil sketch as a design method worked fine for my last mod, but intelligently placing parts inside a mannequin torso is simple compared to a ground up build where precision is required. Enter Google SketchUp, it took twenty minutes to learn it well enough to whip up the 3D design renders shown below, it also helped me get the size down to eight inches cubed... awesome software.





I will skip going into any greater detail concerning the creation of this computer since there is a six page work log covering the start to finish build and there's also a three minute video for those who don't care to read about it... all four sides of the finished sculpture are shown below.



Next up is a shot of the monitor side of the sculpture which houses the 6" TFT LCD with a red Matrix Orbital 2x16 character VFD display above it, the remote control for the internal lighting can also be seen in the lower right of the picture.



A close up of the 6" LCD follows... at 640x480 resolution it does a great job as a secondary monitor that can run totally independent, meaning it can be doing its' own thing while something else is being done on the primary display monitor.



A close up of the magic trick, it takes a keen eye to find the dividing lines within the illusion... this was my intent and if it hadn't worked the whole idea would have been scrapped. This project was built from the inside out, the illusion was made first and everything else was just built around the innermost object, the HellRaiser box.



And finally a shot of the finished computer mod up and running, it looks even better in person.




Hardware List:
VIA Epia MII12000 Mini ITX Mainboard
iTuner PW200M 200W Power Supply
Crucial 1GB DDR266 CL 2.5 Memory
Western Digital 320GB 7200RPM Hard Drive
Panasonic Slim Line Slot DVD/RW Drive
Matrix Orbital MX222 2x16 VFD Display
Parts Express 6" TFT LCD Monitor
Logisys 12v Remote & Red Lazer LED

 

You've done a great job with this mod and a great worklog too. Everything is so neat inside. Could you lett me how you hooked up that LCD, I mean powering it?

 

That's absolutely STUNNING

 

That is amazing!!

That illusion looks so good!

 

@ Neji - The LCD is powered by the small PSU inside the case, it has an operating voltage range of DC 9V-24V and power consumption is 1A.<9W... if what you are asking is how to wire it up you can find that here.

@ Hazardous - Thanks, it looks even better live.

@ beesbees - The illusion was the easy part, thanks.

 

Aha! Yeah, I remember those illusion thingys - I had a money box with a floating cube (much like your design).

Fantastic work!