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Rigging a suspension point
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Control Center
I’m jealous of the boy’s Rave Cave Control Panel (see here) so with the lessons learned I’m going to build myself a more basic version, he says getting carried away with the planning already.
My basic idea is to have all of the various power switches in one rack. This is going to be a riser for my monitor at the same time. The space I have under the primary monitor is 57mm (h) x 150mm (d) x 530mm (w). The only essential measurement is the height to get the monitor for to the right height for my sitting position.
I’ve bought another 230V(ac) to 5V(dc) transformer so I should only need a single power in.
- Each switch should be a nice chunky tear-drop toggle switch.
- Each switch should have a changeable name plate.
- Each switch should have an indicator LED
- The front panel should be removable/replaceable in case I want to update the switch layout or number.
- The top panel should be removable for ease of maintenance.
What do I want to switch?
- Master Switch (to turn the whole box on/off)
- AC1 (for an external power bar that will power 2 screens and the docking station)
- AC2 (angle lamp)
- USB1 (lamp)
- USB2 (spare)
- USB3 (spare)
- USB4 (lamp)
The AC switches and master switch will need to be DPDT so one side will switch the AC and one side DC for the indicator LED.
I’m going to bash this out in wood to start with until I can find something cool looking to house it all!
Here’s version 1… The top lifts off and the front is yet to be attached as it’s going to have lots of holes drilled in it!
Here’s the front plate with holes drilled for the switches. The box ended up being so big that I’m going to use the left-hand side to hide my USB3 docking station and tidy away the clutter of cables.
Here are the switched and LED holders in place to get a feel for it. Pretty happy so far.
There wasn’t space for the names plates to be added so I think I’m just going to go for different colour LEDs (green for the master, red for AC and blue for USB).
Here’s the AC side of things wired up (except for the LEDs).
Here’s the back of the box so far, 1 input that is fused and has some filters to clean up the supply and 2 outputs.
Still haven’t wired up the USB power and sockets or added the LEDs as the 5V power supply that I’ve ordered hasn’t arrived yet. What I have done is start on a second one as I have two monitors! This one is going to be a weird ass shape as the monitors are at different angles!
I still need to cut the front panel and do a shit load of sanding.
The 5V transformer arrived and is now all wired in, along with the USB sockets. Excuse the bad photos… I got excited and it was getting late.
Switches in order:
- Main power
- 2x AC
- 4x USB
Improvements
I’ve got a few ideas for things to go in here but that may be a different project.
- Some LED controls (random geek options on a rotary switch)
- An audio selector to switch outputs from speakers to headset
- An audio selector to switch inputs from laptop to random
- An amp? Possibly, if I want to stop just using my minirig
Pump Up the Volume Middle Finger Light
I love Pump Up the Volume…. I want the middle finger light to go above my work desk. I think I can do it easily enough with a USB LED bulb thingy as I have a load spare.
Here are a load of images I stole off YouTube clips…
It doesn’t seem to have a switch in the film, there appears to be a separate switch attached to one of the mixers who’s sole function is to turn this light on!
I think I’m going to skip this and have a small box with multiple switches for various different lights.
There are also a bunch of other lights …
There are a few scenes where the ‘No’ is covered over but it would be cool to have the ‘No’ and ‘Vacancies’ on different switches.
This one needs to be made as well but possible with the a separate switch so that I have a single control panel for the different lights.
I have no idea what this is but it is awesome and I want it!
Possible tattoo ideas?
On with the Build
If I base everything around 5v USB then I can chop and change as I want. It seems like I’m using 5v USB connectors wherever I can. I don’t like attaching trailing leads to projects, I much prefer mounting sockets and removable cables as you can then swap out cables for different types/styles/lengths of cable.
These are the type of lights I’m going to use. Look for USB light on aliexpress / ebay to find them, they are cheap!
I’ve decided that my control box / switches are going to be in a separate case like the film but I’m not sticking to the film and I want to control multiple lights from one box.
These are the switches that I am going with. They are chunky, overkill, satisfying and I love them! I periodically buy handfuls of them as they find their way into various projects.
As always I do a rough sketch / sanity check before I do anything else.
I might add an LED to the switch box to show if the switch box has power.
So the switch box has now morphed into this….
That is pretty much finished so back to this! I was going to make a rough first draft as we are in lockdown due to COVID-19 and I can’t get parts but I just kept going…
The slot is cut for a chunk of perspex but I didn’t have any… what I did have was a plastic milk bottle that I cut up.
…and then traced the image on straight off the screen of my laptop…
Painted the box red and finished the wiring. I went for the dimmest of the lights in the end as they were so bright. I even had to bounce the light off the back of the box as it was too bright shining straight out.
The camera can’t show the light and the image on the screen but in person it comes out fine!
Improvements
- I should really go back and tidy up the edges of the of the inside of the front plate.
- The switch and USB port should also be nicer mounted on a metal panel on the side of the box. The wood is quite thick making it difficult for a clean mount. I also need to get a bunch of better surface mount USB ports.
Flickering Lamp
Inspiration
I’d thought of this and then Adam Savage beat me to it! An electronic flickering battery powered lamp. There has been a release of much more realistic electronic fire bulbs since they have started using addressable LEDs. I want to convert some of them to battery power to go in various lamps that I own.
This is the bulb that I bought…
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000283039038.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.27424c4dhPYd08
….its cost me about £3
So I cut the base off, went to plug it in and poke at it to work out what DC voltage it ran on and the transformer audibly popped. So I cut the transformer off and went with guess work.
3v…. Nothing, 4.3v… all LED’s on but no flickering (3xAA Batteries), 5v…. all working.
Turns out I was wrong about some of the voltages. The bulb actually alternates between fully on and flickering.
Cheap Ikea lamp to mount it all in! The battery pack can go in the top and then a switch can poke through a random star.
I needed to diffuse the light more, so I popped out each of the glass panels and used them as a template to cut out matching shapes from a plastic milk bottle.
The little latch that orientates the switch didn’t quite fit in one of the points of the star which made the switch just not sit plush. So I filed out the star point…
I tried to hot glue the battery pack into the top of the lantern. That did not go well!
In a flash of inspiration I hot glued some thick foam to the back of the battery pack and then wedged some thin ply underneath to hold it all in place. The foam is thick enough that it is slightly compressed and holds everything in place so nothing rattles or falls out! To change the batteries I just need to press the wood up, slide it to one side and it should pop out.
Neatly and carefully (!) bodge a load of hot glue to hold the LEDs into the tea-light holder.
The step that I missed photographing before this is drilling a hole through the back of the tea-light holder to run the cables out of.
A tiny blob of hot glue to hold the cables behind one of the uprights so it doesn’t drift behind a pane and cast a shadow.
I’ve dry-brushed and smudged the corners of the panes as they were just too clean.
I’ve dry-brushed edges and bits that would wear in silver as it was all too clean and nice!
