Projects – Page 3

Design Project – Poster

Here’s the poster for our capstone design project.

Click for larger version.

Some Old Woodworking Projects

Here are a few of the woodworking projects I’ve done in the past. Felt like sharing.

Chess Board

Dining Room Table

Dresser

Nightstand

Alcohol Cabinet

Temperature Controller Project

Here’s a short vid of the progress I’ve made in the last few weeks for my design project.

August 2006 – Modding my computer case

[Back when I was 16, I guess I had nothing better to do than modify how my computer case looked. Here is a forum post I made.]

In the past 2 weeks or so, I’ve been messing around modding my computer case and improving the things that I just didnt like.

My case is (was?) an Aspire X-plorer ATX mid tower case. Here are pics with possible brief descriptions of what I’ve done.

First, here are some pics of my case before I did any modding to it:

Now here are quite a few shots of what it looks like now after many hours in the garage =P:

Here you can see how I stealthed the DVD drive. (among other things)

This pic shows the switches (in the 3.25" bay) I put in to turn off certain fans and the cathode lights so I can actually sleep at night. Also seen here is the 120mm fan I cut in (with a wholesaw, of course...) and the new mesh i made because the old thing was just fugly, IMO.

Another shot of the custom mesh cover I made, with the fans and light switches off ('Cause c'mon, I gotta show off the craftmanship here =P)

To make the mesh into the exact spot it belongs it took several steps. First i traced the outline of the old mesh with a pencil. Then i scanned the piece of paper to my computer. After a half hour of work, I finished the template. I took a peice of wax paper, taped wide masking tape to it, cut it to 8.5x11, put it in the printer, and printed off a template. I pasted it to the new mesh I needed to cut out. The black outside edge is what I needed to cut, and the red line was where i needed to meticulously bend the mesh.

Onto the side panel: I cut a much larger window out as you can see. For window trim i took 14awg wire and stripped the insulation off in a clean motion, and put it on the edges. It worked out quite nicely. It is held on just by the pressure of the screws holding the window on. In the inside I put a case temp display in the top right corner. I painted the chassis white to glow nicely and contrast the black case. I added a Zalmon CPU cooler. I painted the handle (w/e it is?) of the door white to add contrast.

I cut the top window out to match the side panel (notice the side window near the handle and the top window near the fan). You can see how I also windowed my dvd drive and I also took my Aspire PSU (I know you guys hate these PSU’s – jeez they’re fine IMO…) and slightly modified it so i could make it face up, so that you can see its clear case through the top window. The 80 mm fan I cut in couldnt have fit any better since there is little room between the PSU and DVD drive to fit a fan.

[Sidestepping a bit, here is a different post I made about the DVD drive]

To the right is a picture of my DVD drive. This morning I woke up with ambitions. I decided to hack up my drive, wire some LEDs into it, window it, paint it, and hope it still works.

This is a blurry pic of my wiring for the LEDs, seen from the underside of the drive (without the cover on).

From the top view, you can see how I arranged the LEDs.

For the covers, I cut the inside cover (underneath the very outer top cover) to a allow for a lot of exposure of the disc. I cut the outer cover to a large rectangular shape.

I then cut, placed, and riveted some acrylic plexiglass to to the top. I painted all the covers white (my case chassis is white)

[Now back to the original post…]

Here are a few before and after GIFs of my case.

Some mods worth mentioning that I never explained:

removed the four lit corners on the front of the case and painted the clear plastic they were black.
painted the power and reset buttons white to match the theme
cut out the rear fan mesh and put a 120mm fan in

And finally… A shot of the entire finished product:

Suggestions, questions, and comments are extremely appreciated!

[The end. I was really proud of what I made and had a lot of fun. The computer is still being used today.]

Bathroom Renovation

Completely renovated my mom’s bathroom. Took me ~100 hrs. Here is pictures from beginning to end. Click on the images for larger uncropped versions and short descriptions.

$So I never got any pictures of before I started deconstructing the room. What happened here is the toilet had a slow trickle leak that over time ruined the entire floor. It wasn\'t very obvious until I tore the lino off and started prying up the sub floor. This looks like black mold so it was pretty serious damage.$

$I had to leave the taps on because I didn\'t have access to any shutoff valves besides the water main.$

$In the last picture the drain wasn\'t on. That\'s because whoever did the drain didn\'t glue it properly and EVERY SINGLE JOINT leading back to the main drain was... fucked. I pulled all the pieces apart by hand and gave them a good sand before properly gluing them.$

$On the left you see the taps on again. No shutoff valves for the tub either so that\'s the best I could do. The bucket is because there is a slow drip (shot seals).$

$This is where real building begins. I\'m boxing in the old clawfoot tub because a) my mom wants to shower in it without the risk of water damage, b) it\'s an awesome bathtub$

$Getting some drywall on. I\'m just making things up here.$

$Here is the tiles I cut to go around the tub edge. Used a bandsaw. I chipped #3 but... good \'nuff.$

$Painted the room a tan color (I don\'t know what the actual color would be called.$

$Funny story: Me: \"Mom could I just put the lights and exhaust fan on one switch?\" Mom: \"Sure that would be fine.\" Tie everything in, close up the attic. Mom: \"I\'d like a separate switch for the fan.\" Fuck. I\'ll change the plug to a GFCI, that is just temporary.$

$Grout\'s in.$

$Forget to mention, while building the floor I put a new boot on here to turn the heat register 90 degrees so it wasn\'t half under the vanity.$

Bathroom Vanity Cabinet

Built this for my mom’s bathroom I am renovating right now.

[smooth id = 3]

Open a Google Chrome Tab in Firefox, or a Firefox Tab in Chrome

I’ve put this application together to switch quickly between Chrome and Firefox as I often do. Simply put, this will allow you to open an active Google Chrome tab in Mozilla Firefox (and vice versa) using the shortcut Ctrl+Shift+F. The program itself is an executable that will run in the background and can be accessed from the system tray notification area (bottom right). It’s built with AutoHotKey.

Download
ChromeToFirefox.exe Standalone Executable Download

ChromeToFirefox.ahk Script (requires AHK) Download
AutoHotKey website Link

Note: If you want this to run every time you turn on your computer, place ChromeToFirefox.exe in the startup folder. The startup folder (for Windows 7) is located at C:\Users\YourUsername\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

If there is a bug, it’s probably because Chrome recently updated and I haven’t had a chance to fix it yet. If it doesn’t work, let me know in the comments. Another possibility for error is that it is failing to locate firefox.exe or chrome.exe. It only works if the installation directory is the default location. I’ve included the script to edit, but you will need to download AutoHotKey to compile the exe.

—

I’ve used scripts from both here and here – wouldn’t have been possible if I didn’t have them to work off of.

2009 Corner Desk Build Update

Words to be ignored.
I made a post about the desk I built for myself with the ability to raise/lower my monitors. I think it was a pretty sweet idea, but I ended up hating it. The design wasn’t reliable, and most of all, it wasn’t portable. Also, painting the top of a desk, despite using the highest quality paint and putting on 5 layers of polyurethane, IS A TERRIBLE IDEA. Within a few months the top of my desk was – how should I put it – totally fucked. When I got home this spring, my first priority was to fix my desk and remove the monitor lift thingy-ma-jig entirely.

I ended up buying solid black laminate (who knew solid colors were almost twice as expensive as that pattern b.s.)

Well, here is the picture of my completed desk (click for much larger picture)!

Audio Spectrum Analyzer

This semester in my analog electronics class, one of our projects was to “design” an audio spectrum analyzer that could determine if a signal is low (<1kHz), medium (2-8kHz) or high (>10kHz) frequency. Here is our final schematic:

How not to manage wires in computer case

Here is my computer case right now. I recently installed another gtx280 graphics card (still don’t have an sli-bridge), and I was in a hurry. What a huge mess.

Update: Cleaned it up a bit (also got some new GPUs)…