Project: Harmony

[Lancer]

I started this project in April and have been steadily working on it. It is named harmony becuase it will be my HTPC and the plan is to integrate everything seemlessly as well have almost full control over it from a remote.. So at this point I am about 65% into it and have to have itabout 85% by next Friday so it can be shown at TXGF in Austin at our Austin Modders booth.

So I am going to start with April, I just wanted to share this project with the [H] Community.

Well it has finally begun. I got the case in today and it only survived the knife long enough for me to eat dinner before tearring into it.

Breif description of what is going on. This is going to be my HTPC for the living room. Melissa built one for our bedroom and I decided it is a must have for the living room.

It's a Lian Li PC-V880 and is a very well built case. (well was before I started tearing into it. :wink: ) The interrior hardware has not yet been decided as I am working on a few things and will need to see how that turns out. The case itself will be painted black, and will recieve a good dose of reflective plexi to the outside.

On the top the Kanji for Harmony will be cut out and a sanded peice of plexi will be placed behind it. The plexi will be lit by blue LED, and then masked off so the blue light does not get into the rest of the case. Once that's done the top will be covered with a piece of reflective plexi awaiting the system to be powered up to show of the glowing Kanji goodness.

The inside will be lit by whit cold cathodes and I am in the middle of cutting out the sides so that the interior will be lit up through the reflective plexi panels on the side. The front wil also recieve the plexi panel with a slit to accomodate the slot load dvd burner (thank you DFWDepot.com) and in the other 5 1/4 bay the lcd display will be behind the plexi and will display info for tracks and channel info. There are a few more goodies planned for this including a modded xbox 360 controller for it as well. But enough of this and on to the pictures.

Here is the case in it's virgin state.

Hard to see in the pic but I marked off the cuts for the side

Yay for goggles!!!

Here is is after the rough cut, I spent about 2 hours after that with a file smoothing it out.

Well I ran out of time for today so I will try and know out the other side tomorrow. and I will start drawing out the Kanji on the top to get it ready for the cut. I'm excited it's good to be working on a case again.

 

[Lancer]

Ok so here we go.

First started today out with removing the other side and filing it down.

The I removed a few more unneeded pieces... destroying them more like it.... What? I couldn't get to them because of rivited pieces. (no I'm not taking the rivets out I would never get this thing put back together.)

The mesh on the front I mentioned in the quick mini-review had to come out as well. But it was held in with these annoying sticky strips, I had to use my finger nail to slow get it off.

Next came getting the top preped for the Kanji.

Before I cut it out I need some opinions. since the Kanji is hand written it can't be easily duplicated and I had to resort to drawing it by hand. Let me know if what I drew
1. looks like the picture of what it's supposed to look like.
2. does it look good enough to be cut out.

Here is what it's supposed looks like

And here is my freehand sketch.

Tomorrow will be dedicated to the Kanji as it is a focal point of the case and I will either redraw it or spend hours making sure it is cut to perfection if deemed worthy. Well that's it for today let me know what you think.

 

[Lancer]

Yay pictures! So not that large of an update but man I must say the difference between my new Dremel and my old is night and day. I really wish I had ad it before it would have taken a quarter of the time and wouldn't have had any of the mistakes from the cutting disks grabbing. but oh well what's done is done.

First things first, this was the casebeing used temporarily for the LAN party on Sunday. Man those 7900GTX cards are awesome looking.

And for another fluff photo here is the new Dremel.

Here is the top after I got done with the initial cuts.

I tarted sanding it to get rid of a few of my mistakes, It is going to be painted so it needed a good sanding anyways.

I also prepared the frosted plexi to go behind the kanji, man does belt sanders work great for doing that. :-P

That's about all I have for now. I don't think I am going to get to work on it much untill I get back from vactation. We leave monday but I have already filled my weekend :-(

 

[Lancer]

Ok well as I promised Sheldog, here is a bit of the Plexi he helped me to prepare, and then I riged up some cold cathods to show you what it should look like when finished.

Here it is turned off, very shiny, very reflective. My catthought it was interesting.

Then I rigged up som white cold cathods under it and placed the frosted plexi to give you an idea of how it should look.

It will look even better when finished because the plexi on the bottom will be attached snug against the case but hope yall like it. I had to turn it off shortly after puttting that together because Melissa would have thought me a freak for staring at it continually.

 

[Lancer]

Ok well we tore the entire case apart and powder coated it. I will be reassembling it tonight so should have some more pics then. Only got one picture of us powder coating it (thank you Zap I appreciate it) because I forgot my camera.

Thanks Zap and Mickey for staying up with me till midnight to get this done.

 

[Lancer]

heh Sorry about the lack of pictures but here are a few for you. I have a feeling I need to hurry, TXGF is comming faster than I thought.

On to the pics

This is the case assembled which I really am surprised I got it back together it's like a jigsaw.

Here is the top panel, while being baked the bottom left corner got messed up I am going to try to get it fixed but it won't be a big deal.

Shots of the interior

Here is an idea of what it will look like when assembled, I started cleaning all of the edges on the plexi tonight and should have some pictures up tomorrow or so.

 

[Lancer]

Ok sorry this will be a bit hard to see it's hard to get the camera to focus on this stuff but here are the edges of he plexi and I worked on them

This i how it looked before I started

This is after 400 grit

600 grit

800 grit

1000 grit

Flame polished

Not a bigupdate but this has been fun to do. I ordered a 400w Antec power supply and the sleeving, along with the aluminum fans. Hopefully will be here by friday so I can get some work done on that stuff this weekend. Until then I am going to get the lcd screen I got from Poman working and try and get it installed.

 

[Lancer]

Ok well my friend G came over and helped me get the Noritake VFD setup that I got from Poman, and I must say THANK YOU POMAN!! it looks sweet. I found a plugin for Media Center as well which will be a big help.

Here is the VFD

This is what it will look like behind the plexi

I also recieved some assistance from our cat Sushi.....

 

[Lancer]

Ok well started out the night by attaching my frosted plexi to the case.

Next my attention turned to the sweet VFD I got wired up and I had to decide how to mount it inside of the case so that the screen would be flush to the plexi infront of it.

This was a drive cover that came with the case. Which I give props to Lian Li for provide but they aren't my style. I ripped off the door and decided to use it as the base for my mount.

I then cut a peice of plexi to just the right size to fit inside.

I then found the center of the area and drew out my cut out

Then cut it out and ran a test fit

Looks pretty sweet and will function well.

Next both peices had to be painted to match the case.

Once the paint is dried the plexi will be glued into place as well as the VFD. Should make for nice clean look and was pretty easy to make

 

[Lancer]

Ok tiny update after the paint had dried I assembled it all and here is how it turned out.

 

[Lancer]

Anywho. nothing big today but I got in the fans for the system today

I removed the sticker from them and installed them in the case.

I also got the power supply in. I removed all of the outside stickers, and would like to paint the case of it black but ran into a snag in that I couldn't remove the inside stuff without the use of a soldering iron.

 

[Lancer]

Ok update time I got a lot done so I am feelin pretty good about where I left off for the night.

First off let me show you the new remote thanks to the awesome guys at Logitech!

Ok on to the case.

I mounted the slim dvd to the top of the drive cage. you can see the mounting tape in the holes.

After it had time to set, I came back in with a razor blade and cut out the excess.

Then I started making a new cover for the wasted space

Don't know why I didn't grab a pic after I was done. bu here's an idea of how it looks installed.

Next I started getting some of the plexi mounted. I found some perfect bolts for the job.

Unfortunatly they were a bit long and had to be cut down to size.

It was hard to get a shot on the inside due to the light I had but here are some internal and external shots.

Here is how it looks with the top and sides installed. I didn't do the front panel yet as it has me the most nervous.

I have a bit of cleanup to do on the front before I do that panel anyways.

And here is the current money shot Sometime this week I need to raid someone who has a soldering iron and some blue LEDS I can buy from them so I can get the top finished off.

 

[Lancer]

Ok so sorry this pic didn't come out to great but you have to see this in person. Due to the mirror plexi being on both sides of the case it creates a infinate mirror effect. Man is that going o be pimp once the hardware is in there.

Ok everyone that is it for now I will try to keep this worklog updated as much as I do on the Austin Modders site.

 

[thewhiteguy]

How hard is it to do powdercoating yourself? It looks like yours came out really good.

 

[Lancer]

It's pretty easy, It's much better than paint and lasts longer. Basically the gun has an aligator clip you attach to what you are powder coating then usethe gun to shoot the power. the electric field causes the powder to stick to the metal, ten you place in an oven at 450 deg. for 18 minutes then you are done. I would not recommend doig it in the oven inside your house as it can let off fumes. Don't think it's dangerous just smells. After that ou are done. No sanding is required. I would recommend it to anyone.

 

[Majin]

Nice work, that is a very nice finish you were able to get.
Also your SLI 7900GTX look awesome but cramped in that box, is there enough airflow?


P.S. Your Cat looks fucking pissed!

 

[General Crespin]

You look to be doing a beautiful job. Definitely looks like something that you'll be proud of.

 

[willie92]

Nicely done!

Where did you get the plexi from?

 

[n1ce_hat]

sweet work, keep those pics coming!

 

[Lancer]

Thanks for the comments guys sorry I couldn't respond sooner but I can't check the [H] Forums at work. The plexi comes from Regal Plastics in Austin, Texas. They have just about anything you could ever want Plexi. I wish the 7900GTX's were for this system but they won't fit. As you might notice from that pic the power supply is missing. That's because it was laying to the side. The power supply mounts behind the video cards and does not give yu enought room to install the PCI-e connector. Oh well.

Ok so some updates. I switched the adapter board on the DVD-RW and it's working now. Sweet. Poman has the top till tomorrow and is installing the blue LEDs. Sweet. The VFD is dead.......#%^*@#^(@*&#^ I took it out to see why it wasn't working and the glass is cracked. I think it might have happened when I was installing it. I'll order another one after TXGF but I have too much going on right now to worry with it. Anyways on to the pictures.

Here I was getting the front ready for the bolt holes.

This is after I was done making the holes on the case.

I made he cut for the DVD and installed the front panel. I learned a very important lesson from thie. Don't use a dremel to do that. I am going to have to replace the front panel or think up a creative way to make it look better. anyways here it is.

Sorry my camera hates low light pictures and this stuff is too reflective to use the flash.

Here is the insides with everything installed.

 

[Lancer]

Ok well I feel like I got something accomplished today even though Poman did most of the work. I took the top panel iver to him for the blue LEDs. He laid out the wires and went to work. In all he wired 20 surface mount LEDs for me. After that I took it home and mounted (glued) the LEDs into place.

Next it was out to the garage to mount the cold cathodes.

Then to prevent the white cathodes from invading the space I made a plate to cover the plexi.

Here is a day shot of it lit up It's still a bit dim but Poman has vowed to tackle this better after TXGF.

Here are the shots of it up and running now. Sheldog23 has said he's going to help me fix up the front with the Pin Router at his work so that's going to b fixed up soon.

 

[n1ce_hat]

lookin good! now if you went for those color-changable LEDs..

 

[bail_w]

Lol i was impressed of a white guy understand what that chinese character mean j/k

Nice Work man.

 

[Pkirk618]

nice bro!!!

 

[Lancer]

This weekend was TXGF LAN in Austin Texas (about as close to quakecon as it seems we are going to get this year in Texas) and Austin Modders was there in force. Harmony is not done but close enough to display.

Here is our booth for the event

Here are the rest of the pics I took while I was there.

 

[n1ce_hat]

sweet looks like a ton of fun!

yours is wicked, but look at that sweet Mustang-BOSS orange one at the LAN! loving that orange.

I see your Logitech Harmony remote there, man those things are a life-saver! Mine got stolen, though.. Grr.. Hey wanna buy a second charging dock from me? You could like.. mold it into your case or something.. hmm..

 

[Lancer]

I looked back at some of my old threads and realized I never posted the finished pictures of Harmony for you guys. Here you go.

I also completed a Fallout 3 TV mod this year which I will try and post up, it was at Quakecon this year for those that attended.

 

[SC385]

That came out great. I love the security plexi and the LCD and window.

 

[Private_Ops]

Pretty nice for being 2 years late

 

[Lancer]

Yeah it is hard to beleive I did this that long ago, I still use it on my living room TV as a HTPC.