My first Mod... Starcraft 2

Well I have been checking our TBCS for a while now and finely decided it was time for me to start a project. So I have been tossing ideas around my head and off my friends. A couple weeks ago I cought the new trailer for SC-2 and I was drooling like a baby. So I decided that this would be the perfect place for me to start. After looking at various screen captures I decided to start work on a Terrain Barracks. It has some cool attributes that I think will convert nicely into various components for the PC. Here is a link to the image that I have been using as my template (building in upper left). What I thought would be cool is to have a DVD where the red light bar on the front of the barracks is. So I will post some images of my basic mock up and keep everyone up to date as I go.

Starcraft 2 screenshot

hell, all the buildings in that pic would be great mods. like the one center top w/ the green (UV plexi) in it. should be interesting, lets see some desings!

i see the building your one about, i think it would be wicked if you could build a PC into somthing that looks near enough identical to that.

is this going to be a gaming or everyday rig? water cooled or not?

if i had the money and patience for modding (of that level) i would go with the upper middle building. it looks like it would be really cool do have some green reservoirs for the w/c. the one your doing would have been my second choice for sure. its got some tubing/pipes sticking out which would be perfect for w/c.

anyway i hope you do this one, i used to play starcraft a lot and it was great fun!

heres a +rep to help you get started!

Well as promised here are 5 of my model pictures. I made this model using the styrofoam board that is sold at some hobby shops for project displays, and hot glue. The reason I made up this model is that I am working from that one image posted earlier. By making this model I am able to get better measurements on size and make any adjustments now without costing myself too much time or money. Al together I would say this model took me 3-4 days and $35 at the most.

This is the side shot of the barracks. The blue marker is just adding extra detail and corrections I will eventually make on the final piece.

The Back

Front shot. I will go into more details after the images

Front Angle

Top shot

Ok first to answer some earlier questions. I would like to water cool and make this a gaming rig. I think there is a great location for possibly installing 2 radiators. You can see these in the second image where the big circles say "LED Fan Red". In the game the barracks can fly and it uses thrusters which I will build into these areas. I also want to isolate the air coming into the radiators using the two air intake vents located above the thrusters.

Looking at the front image I plan on installing a DVD drive and replacing the front of the tray with a piece of plexiglass that will be lit to match the game screen shot. I also want to install a system readout screen above this so that the system temperature and other vitals can be seen.

As for the case material, I haven't decided what I will use. At this point I think a polystyrene or ABS with an Aluminum custom frame is the best bet. Also there will be a large array of LEDs around the unit to mimic various lights that are seen. I plan on building a control center to be placed internally for all of the LEDs.

Overall the case is about 24" wide, 18" deep, and 16" tall

And yes I plan on building the feet, I just didn't build them for the model.

Also I am open to suggestions or ideas.

nice work! i like the two rad ideas with it venting right at the top. never building my own case maybe you could make use of your model and put fiberglass all around the model and make a Aluminum frame like you said.

Fiberglass sounds like a complicated and difficult procedure. I have never done anything with that. My plan was to vacuum mold the smaller pieces and then attach them to the core unit. Since the main part of the case is fairly boxy I think it will be easy to build it out of the plastic. Also the model is not perfect. There are many details that need to be worked out. ie component placement, how I open and close the case itself, and various other little things that will pop up as I go.

Also something else I am going to try and do is line most of the case with sound proofing material. What it is is a foil backed adhesive. It is used in cars to help eliminate the external noise. They however only use it in small patches. I plan to line the whole case, and since I will be water cooling it shouldn't hurt my temp, especially with two rads.

Wow man, that is a solid design. I'll definitely be watching where this goes.

SWEET TITS!! that's a great mock-up. MUCH more professional than the beer case mockup I made in my worklog. definitely watching this one!!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Roughhouse

Fiberglass sounds like a complicated and difficult procedure. I have never done anything with that. My plan was to vacuum mold the smaller pieces and then attach them to the core unit. Since the main part of the case is fairly boxy I think it will be easy to build it out of the plastic. Also the model is not perfect. There are many details that need to be worked out. ie component placement, how I open and close the case itself, and various other little things that will pop up as I go.

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its not to hard to work with its just mostly messy. my first time was with patching a canoe and it hasn't leaked since, though it was only used twice since i patched it so who knows.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Roughhouse

Also something else I am going to try and do is line most of the case with sound proofing material. What it is is a foil backed adhesive. It is used in cars to help eliminate the external noise. They however only use it in small patches. I plan to line the whole case, and since I will be water cooling it shouldn't hurt my temp, especially with two rads.

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ya i've heard/seen that stuff before. it like a thick foil with thermal pad like material on the back of the foil. it helps lower vibrations as well as sound dampening. i last saw if on tv being put in the back of a car with a sound system going in it. they covered the entire truck area with it. if you have no fans on the inside make sure its at least open and the chipsets and etc. have good heatsinks.

Well I have been working on some lighting ideas I have for the case. The first one that I have focused my attention on are the LEDs on the feet. I want to make these blinking. So to do that I did some basic research and came up with this circuit. Now forgive me for any errors in my electronics, this is really the first time for me designing a circuit.

This is the schematic that I used for the circuit

Here is the image of my setup on my breadboard

And here is a quick video of the lights blinking.
blinking lights

Hey
Nice work so far.
With the flasher, at school we made on with a picaxe and one without, using capacitors we had the LEDs flashing without a picaxe. Just a little idea if you don't have enough to buy more pickaxes or something cheaper :).

Sam.

This circuit overall cost about $7. The IC 555 chip is only a $1.70 item. Also to note on this circuit is that I dit not include a switch. My plan is to wire all LEDs into a single control panel and then with a few switches make them all controlable. ie flashing LED or solid LED or no LED. I just want to give the lights and the case some flexability.

Not to go too OT, but I wish they gave SC2 a bit more of a serious look, because the first one was just a tad cartoony, this one is almost big time, but then again, that's the art style Blizzard seems to have at the moment... hmm...

So yeah, first of all, I love that model you've made, that is awesome. Second, your plans for the LEDs and everything sound pretty good. I've been watching this a little and can't wait to see where it goes.

what about adding the .......... legs of the barracks,that way you could put some red leds where the bottom turbines should be and could put some vents down there, nice model and you project sound really good

Yeah I plan on adding the legs. Just modeling them was not really necessary. I think they will be fairly straight forward. That would be a good idea to add some vents on the bottom to help with additional air flow through the case.

i cant really tell the size of this...but what about puttin speakers in those vertical bars towards the center of the case?

Those are about 1 inch wide. I was actually planning on placing more led in thos areas as well. I'm not really sure if good speakers would be available in such a small size. Maybe on the front in the small bumps on each side. Those are about 2 inches wide and I could always recess the speaker back into the case.

Some sort of spotlights would be cool there, just for the hell of it... make them either move around in predetermined paths or make them adjustable, that'd be cool... just a suggestion btw.

EDIT: That or on those other things coming out of the front... the hexagonal pieces jutting out there...

Well a quick update. My budget just hit the skids. I need some major work done to my truck so this project is going to be on hold for a bit. Hopefully not too long, so keep your eyes peeled

Wow. this is looking great so far, and thats only styrofoam, so, I can't wait to see the real thing o_O

Well since my budget just took a huge and grinding halt thanks to my truck I decided to take another approach at this mod. I am going to work on the periphrials, which I can do without spending money, and tackle the case at a later point. Don't worry though, once my budget gets loosend up a bit we will start back in on the case ASAP.

So what I am going to start on now is the keyboard. For the keyboard I am using an old dell. The nice thing about this keyboard is that it has 3 buttons at the top that I am going to change around. Typically they are for email, internet and search tools. Instead I am going to install a remote power button and some LED controls to light the key board.

What I would like to do is install some LEDs under the keyboard and light the individual keys. What I am also going to do is make it so that these LEDs can be turned on or off seperate of the PC and I want to add some flair for when gaming.

The way I want to add some flair is by making the lighting situation change dependent on whether I am playing a game (in this case Starcraft) or just using the PC. So I am going to install a switch that will change the standard keyboard color( not sure yet, but probably blue) to reds, yellows and whites to highlight game specific keys. Here is a pic of the keyboard that I will use and some simple notes on it.

more to come later...

Here is a question for everybody on how I should design the keyboard. I was thinking of doing it one of two ways.

First I was going to simply paint it with the same color scheme as the sace. Most likely a red and black keyboard. Red would surround the keys and black would act as a boarder around the keyboard.

The second way I just thought of was trying to make it look more likey a keyboard at a consule that would be foudn inside the barracks or other terrain war ships. I would try to mimick the attached image.

I would go with a dark gray base color and then make the keys glow orange. Replace the push button power with a military switch and change my push buttons for the LEDs to toggle switches.

Let me know what you think.

the second way look better IMHO

Quick update:

I have started some work on the keyboard. I have drilled 30 holes into the base of the keyboard for 30 high output LEDs. I want the keys to be lit up nicely so I am trying to get as much light into the keyboard as possible. I also did a basic coat of chrome paint on both interior sides of the keyboard to help reflect the light around the inside of the keyboard.

So here is a little picture of the base painted (interior) and all the holes. I am starting to place the LEDs, but need to get some more ordered along with additional resistors. Once that is done I will begin placing the switches, The power toggle, light on/off toggle and the light switching that I plan on doing for multiple colors on the keyboard

Sweet man. Good luck with this project. I'm definately watching this.
IMO, I like the first keyboard design. Make it match the barracks. It'll look better in my opinion. Unless the case opens in some large way and the inside matches the second paint scheme.
+Rep man.

Well here is what it looks like for the first 8 LEDs, 22 more to go. Sorry for the blurry picture, but my camera sucks without the flash and the flash just happens to wash out the lights.

Of course I still need to figure out how to make the keys translucent.

dude thats sick

looks nice, have you sanded the leds?... otherwise i think that would be a god idea, since its very sharp in certain places

I haven't , but I will try that. I don't know if it will help this row of lights, since the LEDs are located in the recessed part of the case. I am really hoping that once I get the rest in they will help get rid of some of the bright spots.

So it has been a while since I have posted. I have been busy with work and progressing on the keyboard at the same time. So here is a big update as to where I stand. Sorry if this gets to massive.

So what I have done is put a large array of LEDs in the base of my keyboard. I origanlly planned on only using 20 or so lights, but it quickly ballooned to over 40. Needless to say it should light up fairly well. So here is a pic of the back of the keyboard so that you can see my "wonderful" wiring skills.

You might notice some little white pieces on the back of the keyboard. These are small pieces of styrene tube that I am using to help keep the top of the LED flush with the bottom of the keyboard.

So here is what it looks like in the light. You will also notice that I have installed the switch on the upper left side. I will get into this later.

And here it is in the dark

There are some bright spots but I think I will live with those for now. So as for the switch I had originally planned on making the keyboard multi colored. Well with the number of LEDs that I already have in the base I decided that a single color would be fine. So the switch now is going to control whether the lights are on or off. This switch is a 6 position switch so I plan on using at least 4 of them 1-Off, 2-Logos ( to be installed later), 3-Keys, 4-Keys and Logos. At this point I do not have any ideas for 5 or 6. I want to install a base behind the dial that will contain small LEDs that will light up depending on the position of the switch.

As for the keys I am starting on the letters first. I have drilled holes through the center of the keys and hollowed it out to match the post that is behind each key.

I then glued a small piece of transparency over the holes and sanded it down to be flush with the key. I am also going to sand the surface of the key to help give it a frosted look.

I will then place cut outs of the letters and paint around them. I plan on then removing the letters and clear coating the whole key.

Well I believe that is it for now. I am going to try something special with the space bar, but am not sure how that will work out yet.

Also another thing that I am going to do is extend the top of the keyboard by about 1 inch. This will help the dial and my military power switch sit better on the keyboard.

Hell yeah! That is one damned fine mock-up you got there, this should be cool! Sorry, I arrived a little late)

Well this is a brief update. No pics as I am just drilling holes in keys, gluing and weeding the letters for each key. Long tedious work. Hopefully I will have it done soon, depending on what my holiday schedule is. I am also working on a plexiglass logo that I will be placing on the keyboard and lighting with blue leds. Once I get some work done on that I will post some pics. Until then happy holidays
:santa:

Hey here I am again... Finally. Sorry for such the long delay between posts. It seems like I just got to sit down from the holidays. Of course traveling back to Michigan to celebrate Christmas on two different weekends. Along with celebrating New Years and our Anniversary(New Years Day and 2 years if your curious). So here I am again, and I am sorry and happy to say that I might go away for a while again. We are now looking for a new home, so that is going to take most of my time.

Well on to the updates. I have finally finished all of the keys, except for the space bar. The space bar is going to take a little more work. I have something in mind for that (more to come later). So now I am modding the outside of the keyboard and getting ready to paint it. I have to encase the bottom of the keyboard to hide the wiring. In doing this I have to leave some holes open in order to screw it together. So I am drilling holes in the bottom and filling them with some styrene tubes that I have.

I am adding bondo to the keyboard now to smooth the edge out and fill in some holes.

I have also been working on the logos. I finished the Blizzard name, but the Starcraft is proving to be more of a problem. I will get it eventually. I simply printed the logos onto a sticker sheet and then traced them with an exacto. From there I use my smallest dremel engraver to cut away the outside. With the Blizzard logo I then painted the dremeled area with a satin black. I plan on putting these on the left and right side of the keyboard and back lighting them with some blue EL wire that I have and have them switchable with the switch I am installing on the top of the keyboard.

And Finally a couple of my christmas presents

Thanks Mom and Dad

Thanks Mom and Dad Inlaw

Small LCD from Nintendo DS, Not sure where or how I am going to use this

This is a screen from PSOne portable. I have seen mods online on how to get this to work with a VGA input. It should work nicely on the front of the case.

I also hope to start working on the actual case. I will be getting the frame around this weekend and move from there.

Is that small DS screen the touchscreen one because if you could get that functional it would be badass.

Sand the top of those LEDs to help diffuse the glow, you won't have as noticeable bright spots either.

I really like the keyboard mod. I've never seen anyone do it for all the keys, just as a back light.

Keep it up! :D

Actually I did sand all the LEDs, the problem is that there is little, to no space for the LED's to diffuse in. I think next time I do something like this I might try to either install small LED's inside the keys (2mm LEDs) or use lots of EL wire. I think the second would be more economical and need very little modification of the keyboard.

As for the DS screen I believe the touch screen part is separate from the screen, but I could be wrong. Either way I need to first find a driver for the LCD.