Project: VXR (Part1)

[XcOM]

Ok, part one of my project starts now,

If some of you don't know, the title VXR is a type of car from Vauxhall and i think they look rather nice:

http://www.tafft.com/admin/my_documents/my_pictures/C49_astra_vxr.jpg

ok, the project whole is a keyboard (Part 1), Mouse (Part 2) and the case (Part 3)

Part one starts here, i've always like the DAS keyboard (Used to have something similar)

http://the.infiniteplane.com/images/post/das-keyboard-small.jpg

but im not willing to pay over £100 ($200) for it, so im off to the shops this weekend to get supplys to make my own DAS keyboard.

By plan is this:
Sand entire keyboard (Including all 105 keys)
Fill in LED holes
Move LED's to the middle of the keyboard
Replace LED's with blue ones,
Paint the keyboard and keys VXR blue (At picture above)
put EL-Wire behind the keys

I hope to sand, bondo and prime the keyboard this sat atleast, do the led's next week, and then begin painting a few weeks after that

[Luke122]

Looks like this will be a great project! As soon as I saw VXR I knew what you were up to.
:D

Looking forward to more posts on this!

[DonT-FeaR]

im setting up camp to watch this unfold

[The boy 4rm oz]

God dammed Vauxhall lol, they are just a rip off our Holden lol. A nice looking car, like the colour. Can't wait for this to develop XcOM.

[XcOM]

holden and vauxhall are esscencly the same company as they are both owned by GM motors, they bought the rite to sell the monaro in the uk under the vauxhall badge, and i admit, its simply stunning, looks sooooo nice, sounds perrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrfect and is simply an amazing machine.

I got the bondo, primer and sandpaper, i just haven't found a sutable keyboard, i went currys, pc world, comet and even tried sevrel local pc shops and no one had a simple plan usb keyboard.

so im going to order it online, should be here by the end of the week (Fingers crossed)

[FuzzyPlushroom]

Vauxhalls are rebadged Opels; Opel, Holden, and our Saturn and Pontiac share a lot of vehicles.

I wouldn't expect to find a Simple Plan keyboard. Kind of a crappy band, no? :D Does the keyboard have to be small? A decent old PS/2 keyboard with a USB adapter might be better - and you can get them cheap-to-free (I have a lovely NEC RT101 and Dell AT101W and QuietKey; all of which were free). If you've found an okay USB-native 'board, though, it'll do fine.

Anyway, looking forward to seeing progress on this one. I love car-themed mods. +sub

[XcOM]

thanks for the tip fuzzy,

i looked on ebay, i've never seen a ps/2 ->USB converter before, i've got a few USB -> ps/2.

this is what ive just got:

http://i20.ebayimg.com/05/i/000/d4/91/9d33_1.JPG

Bought two of them, i can always use large heat shrink and seal the connector on.

now to go a get a cheap keyboard from town tomorrow.

[The boy 4rm oz]

Holden were the original. HOLDEN FTW lol.

Yeah I have never seen the PS2-USB connectors either. I could use them.

[DonT-FeaR]

HOLDEN biatches

fords are only just 'hold en' together lol

go australiaaaa

[FuzzyPlushroom]

They're out there - I only knew about 'em from my 'keyboard fetish' - nearly all "proper keyboards" (http://www.clickykeyboards.com/) are old-style PS/2 or even five-pin types.

[XcOM]

.... even five-pin types.

YAY AT keyboard connectors, they were pr0,

Anyway, i got the keyboard, sanded it, bondoed the led's and quick buttons, drilled the new LED holes,

And primed it, i still need to hold it upside down and prime it so i get primer rite into the creviss'

Will upload pictures tomorrow, my internet seems to be very laggy for some reason??????

[XcOM]

Here we go, first up i went and got myself a plain and simple keyboard:

http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h307/XcOM_photos/IMG_0215Resized.png

YAY, english bondo! and its made just down the road from where i used to live.

http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h307/XcOM_photos/IMG_0228Resized.png

Anyway, i removed the LED's and quick launch buttons and sanded the keyboard with some 600 grit dry to prep the area, after that i filled the holes with some of my english bondo, it took one code to do the LED holes and two coats to do the quick launch buttons.

After the bondo had been left to set for about 40 minutes each coat i sanded with some nastry 240 grit paper to get through the high lumps of bondo, then jumped back to 600 grit to smooth it out,

http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h307/XcOM_photos/IMG_0230Resized.png

The drilling of the new LED holes

http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h307/XcOM_photos/IMG_0225Resized.png

and a test fit of the new LED,

http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h307/XcOM_photos/IMG_0229Resized.png

Thanks to the cheepness of the keyboard there is no springs or parts that can jam from paint, so this job just became easier.

http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h307/XcOM_photos/IMG_0232Resized.png

The first coat of primer is down, then sanded it with some 600 grit dry and primed it again, then sanded it 600 grit wet.

http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h307/XcOM_photos/IMG_0234Resized.png

That was all i got done sofar, i need to find a way of supending it upside down before i give it the last layer of primer and starting to paint the colour.

And one last photo, the must have cats!

Misty:
http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h307/XcOM_photos/IMG_0219Resized.png

[jdbnsn]

Sweet! You gonna mod the cat? Some LED's attached to it's feet would look cool when you chase it around in the dark. Just a tip, those images are likely straight from your camera, I'm guessing so because they are over 3 MB in size which loads slow for even broadband. You can scale them down to less than a MB easily without losing any detail. Can't wait to see what the XcOM can do!

[The boy 4rm oz]

Yeah pics take a while to load but progress looks good. Get your camera to save the pics as .jpg or resize when you upload the image.

[DonT-FeaR]

all of my pics are jpegs and they are 2 mb each


good progress mate

[The boy 4rm oz]

Mine are .jpg and when I upload them at 800X600 they are about 250-350Kb. This is with using the ImageShack tool bar for firefox.

[XcOM]

i hate to say this guys, but i have already reduced the images to less that 1/4 of there org size, they were about 15mb each to start!

Resizing them again to reduice the size

[DonT-FeaR]

15mb!?!!?!??!?! thats bloddy massive

[XcOM]

15mb!?!!?!??!?! thats bloddy massive

Yea, A raw 12.2MP SLR picture is about 15mb!

[DonT-FeaR]

shiz thats big.. 12.2 mp .... i heard once the human eye can only see like 9 or something?!?!? probably bull but hey

12mp wow nice camera

[XcOM]

im not sure about that 9mp human eye thing, i've never heard of that before,

and it is a Conon EOS 450D 12.2MP, max res of just shy of 5000x4000

[FuzzyPlushroom]

Conan, The Barbarian-Camera? I'd like to say that about my old PowerShot A40, but as I mentioned a while back, it wasn't exactly invincible in close combat.

[XcOM]

ok, these pics were taken with my old 5mp thingie for £5 ($10)

can you guess what im doing?

http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h307/XcOM_photos/7414555d.jpg


http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h307/XcOM_photos/2da0f31d.jpg

Freeky isn't it, a panint shelf thingie.

http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h307/XcOM_photos/7d9dd7cb.jpg
no the picture isn't upside down, its jut the keyboard blue tac'ed to the underside of that wood i just suppened to makesure all the keys stay out so i can paint all the cracks.

http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h307/XcOM_photos/12361e09.jpg
all done.

i also got my converters, so i painted one

http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h307/XcOM_photos/a148885f.jpg



one slight problem, the converter dosen't work correctly (Well the other one dosen't havent tried this one yet)

Windows says the USB device is malfunctioning, it might be because i was just plugging it in with no membraine, just the pcb, will wait till i have put it together then try it, see if that makes any difference.

[The boy 4rm oz]

Love that blue colour mate.

[DonT-FeaR]

looks really really nice..

the blue that is