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