Emmet's Hedgehog - HTPC

There's been a load of interest in HTPC/Media Centre PCs around hexus recently - what with reviews, mods and discussion etc - so I might as well add my attempt to the mix :p.


Me and my brother have been contemplating building a HTPC for a few months but being a bit strapped for cash and with no suitable hardware to hand we couldnt really do much. Then a few weeks ago I was given a rather dodgy 1.2ghz AMD system with 256MB ram 40GB hdd Radeon 7000 with tv out etc which seemed to fit the bill. Problem was it was a bit dodgy with intermittent optical drive problems and various other dubious problems :(. Anyway by paring it down to one optical drive, 1 HDD, and installing Windows XP we got it working fairly well at least for playing dvds mp3s, oggs etc.


Our idea is to have the HTPC fit in our HIFI rack but the system was in the standard dirty beige tower case :(. Not wanting buy a case or to build one from scratch we decided it would be possible to cut down the atx case lay it on its side and just about fit it in our HIFI rack. On the rack the front of the case is the most important and visible part while the sides and top are not really seen much . So we came up with this as the design for the front;

http://www.yesalbum.com/v001/myth/htpcsmall.jpg

Most of it will be brushed aluminium with a line of polished copper across and splitting over the drive bay. The switch will be a solid aluminium lump fitted in the line of copper.

Seemingly, midi tower cases (when laid on their side) seem to be almost exactly the same width as standard seperate Hifi components which is kind of handy for our purpose. So all we really needed to do was cut a section off of the top (when laid on its side) of the case to make it thin enough to fit in our rack. Luckily our Hifi rack has fairly large spaces between the shelves (to fit chunky NAD amps :p) but even so we had to cut about 2 and half inches off the case to enable the case to fit into the rack when laid flat. This does, just, give room for pci/agp cards withought any restriction and enabled us to retain the pci/agp shield area on the back of the case.

Although not really necessary we decided at this stage to shorten the case from front to back by taking a section off the front. While this does make the whole thing more compact it also makes it weaker.

Anyway here's a pic of the cut down case

http://www.yesalbum.com/v001/myth/cimg0679.jpg

The new psu mounting position can be seen on the side of the case. That was the only position it would fit without major redesign of the motherboard mounting position. It does mean that the power cable will be plugged into the side of the case which is not a very elegant solution but it hopefully wont be too noticable. All the cutting was done with a 4inch angle grinder with a nice 1mm stainless blade. Although fairly quick and painless way of cutting sheet metal it is fairly tricky to get a dead straight line with it. I also bent a flange down around the cut edge by scoring the metal with the angle grinder and then bending with a large pliers.

I know the work so far on the case is a bit rough (it looks worse than it is) but we had made a decision not to bother getting the backend perfect. Once sprayed black and in our HiFi rack we reckon it wont be too noticable. That way we can spend more time on perfecting the front and getting it so good no one will notice the back :p.

Here's a pic of the cut down case with the Psu and mobo mounted in place.

http://www.yesalbum.com/v001/myth/cimg0687.jpg

The psu is only 250 watt but it is very very quiet which is nice considering it's an old PSU. The CPU fan, on the other hand, is a bit of a screamer so the heatsink has been taken off so we can fit it to a larger and slower revving fan.

The hdd will be mounted in the corner at the back where the PSU originally went. There is potential room for a couple of hardrives which is handy. 40GB isnt going to get us far if we use it as a PVR.

Here's the hardrive mounted.
http://www.yesalbum.com/v001/myth/cimg0690.jpg

It is screwed directly to the side of the case with rubber grommets to (hopefully) absorb some of the vibration. Its a fairly slow 5400rpm maxtor and probably the most noisy thing in the system :(. Still its easy to upgrade. A 160GB Samsung Spinpoint would be nice :).
You can see the old 60mm CPU fan at the bottom of the pic.


Here a pic of the case with the top fitted on.
http://www.yesalbum.com/v001/myth/cimg0683.jpg

It doesnt look as bad as we expected :D. The whole thing is going to be sprayed matt black which should hide the imperfections.

After some thought we decided to attach the aluminium and copper of the facia to a wood bulkhead. This will give strength to the facia and make it easy to mount the optical drive and switches LEDs etc. The other option would have been to use sheet steel (like the rest of the case) but this does not have the same rigidity as the wood and seeing as we have already weakened the case by cutting it down a strong front is necessary.

Pic of the bulkhead squared up, cut for drive mounting point and sprayed black.
http://www.yesalbum.com/v001/myth/img_8024.jpg

MDF would probably have been the best material for this but we didnt have any to hand so we knocked it up out of an old 1/4 inch pitch pine door panel. The hole to the left of the 5.25 inch drive slot will hold the eject switch for the drive. This will be behind the left most point of the drive door (see diagramn at top) so pressing the left side of the drive door will eject the drive tray.

To do that the optical drive had to have it's switch remote wired;
http://www.yesalbum.com/v001/myth/cimg0578.jpg

The drive is a standard 16x DVD rom, nothing fancy I'm afraid :(. The Drive activity LED is also wired up here. The two switches on the drive were unsoldered and will be used as power on switch and drive eject. They are both nice short action switches, handy for this job.

HTPC on the cheap, I like it, will be keeping an eye on this one m8, good luck.

Cheap's good, if it works :p.

Tbh I'm really gonna have to get a tv tuner card and larger hardisk to get it working make it into a fully featured HTPC but I havent yet decided what software to run on it. I'll be interested to see how Directhex gets on with Mythtv or Freevo in his project :).

I cut out the 1.2mm aluminuim sheet for the facia;
http://www.yesalbum.com/v001/myth/img_8021.jpg

I cut it from a large sheet with the angle grinder and 1mm wheel. Its a tricky job cutting that kind of thing if you dont happen have a large guillotine or laser cutter :D. You cant use a hacksaw or piercing saw because it doesnt have the throat and snips would bend the sheet too much. Anyway the angle grinder does the job although the sheet needed a bit of cleaning up with a file afterwards. I then rubbed down one side with wet a dry to be sure that I could get a good finish on it, ie make sure there was no deep scratches etc. Then I covered it with masking tape to protect it from damage during the rest of the work.

I drew up the design for the front in AutoCad with all the drive openings and switch positions marked and then it was a simple job to print out full size on two A4 sheets. I can stick the printouts to the aluminium sheet (masking tape side) with superglue and I can follow that when cutting.

Our design also requires a copper sheet behind the aluminium so that when the aluminium is cut and stuck in front you will see a 6mm line of copper going across the facia and around the drive door.

Here's the copper sheet partly cut out laying on the wooden bulkhead roughly in the correct position;
http://www.yesalbum.com/v001/myth/img_8034.jpg

The slot cut in it is just big enough for the drive tray to eject through. It still needs holes for drive activity lights, eject switch, and power switch to be cut.

As always these things take longer than you expect :(.

Facia design looks great, keep us posted :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Norky

Facia design looks great, keep us posted :)

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Thanks :) Should hopefully look pretty nice when finished.

Here's the main power button :)
http://www.yesalbum.com/v001/myth/img_8036.jpg #

It was cut from 6mm alu bar stock and then filed and lapped. The notch will be the hinge point which will be hidden behind the facia. I only wanted a small minimalist pinprick of light for the power button so the light collecting rod is only 2mm at the front of the switch. I drilled the hole 2mm right through the button and then 5mm from the back and turned the end of the light collecting rod down to 2mm. It was actually quite tricky to get the rod that small without melting it but anyway it looks pretty nice now.

We were also messing around a bit with LEDs :D
http://www.yesalbum.com/v001/myth/img_8098.jpg

We had originally thought that we wanted the main button light to glow purple (red and blue LED combined) when off (but plugged in and psu turned on) and then turn a brighter blue when powered up hence the configuration of LEDs in the pic. After a lot of fiddling with the LEDs, resistors, etc and fiddling with the positioning of the three LEDs we decided it would be simpler if the button light was purple when on and blue when on standby. That way we only need two LEDs and it is lot easier to position them nicely so we get a gently blue glow on standby and a good purple when powered up :).

I spent a few minutes fixing an old 90mm fan over the cpu heatsink;
http://www.yesalbum.com/v001/myth/img_8103.jpg

I couldnt be bothered spending too long on it so I just bent a few bits of copper wire which act as spacers and hold the fan a few cm above the heatsink. When run on the 5v rail it is nice and quiet and produces a good flow of air over the whole mobo. I checked the CPU temps and it stays nice and steady at around 35 deg c even when overclocked to 1.4ghz :D

Here's the aluminium sheet roughly cut out;
http://www.yesalbum.com/v001/myth/img_8039.jpg

You can see the printout stuck on the front. I cut most of it with the hacksaw and finished the curves with the piercing saw. Thats the easy bit though. Now it has to be cleaned up with a file and finished so that all the lines are parallel and the curves are correct :(.

looking good so far

thats sum task you have undertaken.

i can't really comment much on what i see, until its finished, but its coming together!

Cleanly cut, nice one :)

Well Ive got some more done but some mistakes as well :(.

Here's a pic of the switch mounted through the copper sheet;

http://www.yesalbum.com/v001/myth/img_8121.jpg

I cut all the holes in the copper and sanded it down to a nice finish and then lacquered it but as you can see in the photo I got losts of dust on it when it was dryng so it will have to be done again :(.


When we originally cut down the case we saved the 5.25 inch drive cage and after a bit of hacking with the angle grinder it is perfect for screwing to the bulkhead and mounting the DVD drive.

http://www.yesalbum.com/v001/myth/img_8108.jpg

The drive slides on on its quick release rails and fits in perfectly. The little screw at the corner of the drive is to hold the drive eject switch firmly in place.

Here's the other side of the drive cage;

http://www.yesalbum.com/v001/myth/img_8106.jpg

The wires are for the drive activity LEDs, hard disk on left and optical on right. The LEDs are 3mm bright blue jobs salvaged from an old Akasa fan. They are going to shine through 1mm holes in the copper sheet although even so they are going to be fairly bright - possibly too bright for a HTPC.

I just found that, when fitted to the front, the optical drive only barely clears the RAM stick by 1mm or so :eek:.

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

http://www.yesalbum.com/v001/myth/img_8112.jpg

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 :p) 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.

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

Here's the back of the switch;

http://www.yesalbum.com/v001/myth/img_8117.jpg

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;

http://www.yesalbum.com/v001/myth/img_8130.jpg

and with the system powered up;

http://www.yesalbum.com/v001/myth/img_8129.jpg

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

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.

http://www.yesalbum.com/v001/myth/img_8136.jpg

i'm liking this:)

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:)

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.

come on.....waiting with baited breath

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

http://www.yesalbum.com/v001/myth/crw_8154.jpg

All sprayed black :)

http://www.yesalbum.com/v001/myth/crw_8143.jpg

http://www.yesalbum.com/v001/myth/img_8135.jpg

http://www.yesalbum.com/v001/myth/img_8139.jpg


Nice eh ? :devilish:

Very nice! :)

Have fun with it.

Some details;

http://www.yesalbum.com/v001/myth/crw_8156.jpg

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.


http://www.yesalbum.com/v001/myth/crw_8151.jpg

Drive activity lights. They look cool :rockon:


http://www.yesalbum.com/v001/myth/crw_8154detail.jpg

Detail of power switch area (excuse the blurry photo :()


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

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.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 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.

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turkster - leave it be, s'good

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

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 :D.

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

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 :p. 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 :rant:. So I think we'll see how it goes with the wireless optical mouse to start with :).

you can use one of those remotes to control your pc! i have very little electronics know how and i manged to make a working ir reciever using some basic instructions and googling for help. this site is a good start. it was really really easy, cost me £3, all the parts came from maplin and a soldering iron from the market! used cat5 ethernet cable to lengthen it to the fron t of my case and a serial port to plug it into.

http://www.cesko.host.sk/girderplugin.htm this is a good basic diagram

software wise i use uICE which has a nice OSD but girder is also good, however it is far more complex

have a go, it is REALLY easy and works well too, and its less than a fiver! :)

Yeah I know I can use one of my present remotes but at the mo I've a real aversion to them :D.
In the last few months I've gone through loads of different multifunction remotes . I had a few all in one Kameleons (with an nice aluminium body a blue backlit touchscreen/buttons) which all went wrong after a few weeks. So I got sick of them and bought a Philips (with a LCD screen which doesnt really do much ) which does still work. Then a few months ago I brought a NAD multifunction (to control our amp) which eats up 4 AAA batteries in about a week. :rant::mad: :rant:

Thanks for the link though (I didnt realise it would be so easy/cheap):). I was considering doing something like that but I'll see how it goes with a wireless mouse first.

i'm shocked. and stunned. that thing is BEAUTIFUL.

:) Now all I have to do is get the software looking beautiful............


I think I'm going to give mythTV a go but it'll probably kill my interest in linux :p.

It will, believe me. My new 0.17 build has had some teething issues but is working nicely now.

Well I like a bit of challange........ although maybe not that much :D

I was thinking of trying it on Fedora C3 as there seems to be some comprehensive info on how to set that up at
http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/.

Well I finally got scart to composite connector and wireless mouse/keyboard about a month ago but had to go abroad and didnt get a chance to post it.

Anyway the scart to composite works fine. Despite composite being at the bottom of the pile when it come to image quality I was actually fairly impressed. It is only plugged into a basic 21 inch tv but it is fairly OK to use standard XP at 800x600.

With the the dirt cheap Labtec wireless keyboard/ optical mouse (which actually looks fairly decent) the setup is perfectly adequate for playing music videos and dvds. Although it wont quite handle FarCry :p a various flash games like "N" work nicely.

TBH I cant quite see the need for a remote control. With basic Audio player transport controls and sleep buttons on the keyboard and a wireles mouse that will work on your knee or armrest I'm quite happy :).

I'll add some pics of it in our HiFI rack soon.