Emmet's Hedgehog - HTPC

[turkster]

Pic of the copper stuck to the bulkhead showing the slot for the drive tray;



You can see the two 1mm holes for the drive activity LEDs at the right. The rough bits of alu astuck to the front are 0.5mm spacers so that the alumimium front sheets will lay flat. The drive eject switch is (rather out of focus ) on the left of the drive. The copper is in a bit of a mess as I still have to sand down and re-lacquer it.

[turkster]

Just got the switch mechanism sorted and roughly positioned the facia to see how it looked. It looks good

Here's the back of the switch;



The LEDs are bound together with masking tape which makes it easy to adjust the colour of the light going through the light collecting tube. The switch is on the right and the pivot point for the button on the left all fairly roughly screwed in place. Anyway its good and strong.

Here is what it looks like from the front with the system on standby;



and with the system powered up;



I've still got perfect the finish on the aluminium panels and fix them to the front but its slowly coming together now .

[turkster]

I decided the hardrive mounting was not the best so took the 3.5 inch drive cage from the old case and fixed it to a plate with rubber dampers. This gives room for up to three hard drives with much better vibration insulation.

[OV3RCL0C3R]

i'm liking this

[conan]

Looking good, modding from the ground up, and doing it on the cheap as well. Good luck with the project, look forward to seeing more

[turkster]

Thanks guys . It's pretty much finished now, Ive just been a little busy over the last few days so I'll get the photos up when I get a chance.

[ikonia]

come on.....waiting with baited breath

[turkster]

Ok here we go..........



All sprayed black








Nice eh ?

[Hedgeh]

Very nice!

Have fun with it.

[turkster]

Some details;



Drive tray. You can see the eject button (on right) which is actuated by pushing the drive door/cover. It works nice and cleanly although there is a danger that it could get damaged when open.




Drive activity lights. They look cool




Detail of power switch area (excuse the blurry photo )


Now I have to start thinking of software to run on it

[Hans Voralberg]

Very nice indeed. But i think why don't you place the power button some where else and make it a bit bigger, a bit too simple from the front, i think.

[schmunk]

Very nice indeed. But i think why don't you place the power button some where else and make it a bit bigger, a bit too simple from the front, i think.

turkster - leave it be, s'good

[conan]

Looks great, a job well done Whats it like for noise?

[turkster]

It is actually much quieter than I expected. We put it in the HiFi rack (bottom shelf) and it doesnt make any more noise than the central heating timer which is on the wall behind (certainly nothing you'd hear when listening to tv/mp3 etc). The hdd still makes the most noise but I cant complain.

Hans; We design it to fit in with with our HiFi equipment and the power button is no smaller than those on our radio or amp. We did actually consider putting some usb ports etc on the front but then decided that we wouldnt really need them on the front of a HTPC. The design is certainly minimalist but thats what we wanted and tbh up against our NAD amp it looks positively lavish .

[muddyfox470]

to be fair that look proper minted from where i am sitting, well done to you!

how man man hours in total do you think you have spent?

ian

[turkster]

Well I'd say we spent around 30 man hours on it. That includes all the time we spent discussing/designing it. The most time consuming thing was trying to get a good finish on the aluminium as I had to re-do it twice due to scratches/marks etc that I caused during assembly .


It's in our HiFi rack now and looks just the job (although its the only silver thing in there). I havent had a chance to think much about os/software etc so at the moment it is just running XP pro with Winamp, Power DVD, and divx. We havent even got a s-video to scart adapter yet so at the moment it's only good for playing mp3's via keyboard shortcuts . When I get a chance I'll pick up an s-video/scart adapter and a wireless keyboard/mouse and (probably a tv reciever and larger hard drive in the long run). I was toying with the idea with getting a IR reciever for it but tbh we already seem to have too many remotes and too many things to control them with. Even with two multifunction remotes I always seem to have to pressing 100's of buttons just to start watching tv . So I think we'll see how it goes with the wireless optical mouse to start with .