Thursday, 21 March 2013

Modded PSU and Completed Backdoor

Luckily my Dad is an electrician and has been able to help me with this project in all sorts of ways. One of my main concerns was how to supply power to the whole setup at the touch of one button. I'd seen online that many people were using Smart Strips but it seems in the UK many people have had problems getting them to work properly. There are also ways of modding a power strip, but as it's such a small cabinet, there really isn't enough space to hold one without it looking a mess. So my Dad's suggestion was to do away with the power strip altogether and instead just wire in a relay (we used a 10A DPDT 12v Miniature Relay). In effect what this does is when the power button to boot the PC is pressed, this makes a connection in the relay and allows the other devices (marque light, amp for the speakers and the monitor) to all be able to switch on at the same time. Here you can see the relay which is connected to the power supply:

Although we are using the power button found on the front of most PC towers to switch on the whole system, there is also a master power switch for the PSU which we decided to mount on the back door so that the power may be turned off completely from the unit. Along with this we also mounted the socket from the PSU for the plug onto the back door:

Because there was exposed circuitry on the inside of the cabinet from the PSU socket, we covered this with a plastic cap:

Next we added the fan for the backdoor and also a knob for opening it:

And here it is so far, with the computer fully shelled and running Hyperspin:

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