Choo Choo

[WoZZeR]

Santa bought me this wee beastie for Christmas:

I've spent the last 3 weeks or so formulating a plan as to what precisely to do with it....

The amount of available space is quite small, the power supply sits in the cab, the hard drive sits underneath that and the atomiser, motors and optical take up the front of the engine unit. Shown here with the powers supply removed:

The mini itx form factor motherboard sits on risers in the carriage and with restricted length and depth to the case a full height/length graphics card won't fit:

So I have a loose plan:

I shall replace the manual switching arrangement (pictured above) for the motors with optical sensors attached to an Arduino and Motor Controller board. This will give me PWM control of the train as well as programmable control of the atomiser and proposed steam train sound generator board.

The cumbersome battery arrangement at the back which powers the atomiser and motors will get replaced with something bespoke located somewhere on the train. (I did say a loose plan)

Once those bits are done the case and importantly back panel are free for minor redesigns hopefully enabling a low profile graphics card to fit, a Sapphire 6670 is the current plan along with an ASRock Mini ITX FM2 board and A10 5800. In effect a budget dual GPU setup in a tiny box.

Cooling looks less than impressive as standard, just a single 120mm fan at the front of the carriage sucking air in, redesigning the back panel will allow me to fit dual 60mm fans blowing air out which should help. I may be able to redesign the bottom of the carriage to help cool the graphics card or even get it to fit but the design is more complex.

Oh, and lastly, the track is nearly 3m long so I shall use just 2m of it against a shallow silhouette backdrop inspired by a fallout 3 style environment with lighting to match in the train and backdrop.

 

[WoZZeR]

Cheers chaps.

Progress is slow as I am buying parts individually due to lack of funds, but I have the ASRock Mini ITX motherboard, which was handily on this weeks special. I also have a Arduino Nano, which is very tiny, amazing.

But, this post is to document my new endpanel for the carriage of the train and get a bit of feedback.

Here's the original end panel, I scanned it:

The red doodle is just stuff I didn't need. I traced the scan to get a vector drawing and came up with this:

I found a website which tested fan grills and found the best compromise on noise and throughput were wire grills, so I am thinking of fitting black wire ones on the first build.

I did have these from an old Shuttle:

They are 60mm slimline fans.

So, I took that vector drawing in DXF format to a local printers with a laser cutter, sadly they don't cut aluminium but they knocked up one in clear 1.5mm acrylic for me for a stunning £5:

And:

I would like the panel to match the train, satin black with a lumpy finish and I guess the tin backplate of the motherboard is going to look rubbish.

So, spray the backplate or bin the backplate and have the holes for the connectors directly in the endpanel.

Anyway, so far I am dead chuffed (no pun intended) to get the fans in, I have moved them 1mm to the right to centre them up. And, it looks as if there is plenty of room for the low profile GFX card which I shall hopefully get next week.

 

[WoZZeR]

Just a quickie.

I have now got the train up and running.

For Christmas a Gigabyte F2A85XN Motherboard, AMD A10-6800K and a WD 1TB Hard Drive arrived down the chimney.

I spent yesterday evening assembling it all and it is all running and looks great.

I will spend the day tidying it up and getting all the software in and then post some pics of all work to date, including the cable braiding etc.

 

[WoZZeR]

Spent ages trying to learn how to take decent photographs indoors without using flash, so here's a couple to whet your appetite

Added the AMD A10 6800K:

Then after a dry build decided to shorten and braid the cable on the stock AMD heatsink, the zip ties are a temporary measure until I decide on a better solution to hold the cable in place:

And on the board:

Slotted the memory in, I chose Corsair Vengeance Pro 2133 Mhz:

There is only room for a small low profile graphics card, AMD suggest a 6670 to partner the A10 6800 so in it went:

My back panel in 1.5mm acrylic has just snapped in 1 corner so will need to have one made in aluminium which is a bind. Will continue the build whilst waiting though.

I've also braided the power supply leads with 3 shades of grey from MDPC, piccies soon.

 

[WoZZeR]

Another update on my very slow moving project.

I have had a new panel cut for the back of the train and whilst waiting for it to arrive tidied up the 2 Shuttle fans that sit on the back. They started out like this:

A little cutting and soldering moved them onto this:

And then, with a little bit of effort:

Some careful drilling and a couple of zip ties underneath:

And mounted in place on the old acrylic end panel:

So, a custom case specialist rather splendidly cut this for me out of Lian Li aluminium:

I was very pleased with it, I will need to countersink the screw holes a little and maybe black the edges, but anyway here it is in place:

 

[WoZZeR]

Oh, I forgot to mention, I have also done a spot of braiding to the ATX leads:

Once again shown in place with the old acrylic end panel:

I will try to tidy up the leads with zip ties at some point.

The spiffy braid is from MDPC-X and worth every penny.

 

[WoZZeR]

Thanks for the kind comments chaps

It's more than a PC, I plan on running the track over a bridge at eye level across the spare bedroom. I would like a nice backdrop behind it, maybe a Fallout 3 style sillhouette and a water tower and liquid cooling is the eventual aim I think. Shame I can't squeeze more powerful GFX into it but I have ideas....

The Gigabyte Motherboard is very nice but the USB 3 Header Cable supplied with the Train doesn't reach the connector on the board. Similarly the Power Switch, HDD LED etc are a gnats whisker too short.

I haven't worked out how to extend the USB 3 yet.

Just received some of the Phobya Front Panel Extensions, they are cheap but the braiding is less than brilliant, however for the price they can be souped up.

Will set to work on them and post some piccies later in the weekend.

 

[WoZZeR]

Another little update, I have been having fun with the Phobya front panel extensions:

As you can see they are adequate but not brilliant. So I attempted to make them a little better. Stripping them down was easy enough, little plastic tags on the back of the connectors lifted up with a scalpel allowing the wires to be pulled clear. Then I stripped off the existing heatshrink and braid and put some new on:

I rather overcooked the first attempt:

My second attempt was a little better:

So they eventually looked like this:

In place:

I drilled a teeny hole in the body of the CPU heatsink to fit a cable tie to hold them in place:

Time is thin on the ground at the moment but it does run and I am using it playing with fan speeds and tweaking it:

My next job is to convert the main 120mm fan to molex and tweak it's speed with resistors. I still have the USB 3 to sort out, the Arduino and associated sensors to install and of course lighting and assorted fripparies.

 

[WoZZeR]

Does that actually move? I see they have a version with a motor.

Indeed it does.

The motor sits near the front wheels and originally the power was supplied to the motor from a battery pack on the back of the carriage. Direction was controlled by a huge clumsy switch on the floor of the carriage.

It came with 6 lengths of track, each about 48cm long.

I am going to use just 4 of the pieces of track to span our spare bedroom at eye level or slightly lower.

I have also replaced the direction switches with an Arduino Nano powered IR setup, this will be installed shortly.

I haven't quite decided how to replace the battery pack yet, am unsure whether I can grab the current required from the computers power supply safely.

I'll see if I can snap a few piccies to explain the above a bit easier.

Thanks for the interest chaps.