Tardis

[BlaiddDrwg]

I considered making a TARDIS for my first modding experience, but I decided it was too difficult. Looks great, though.

[Vertigo]

Excellent idea, and your wood work is very good.

[m4gnum]

Thank you all, here's a slightly longer update than the last 2. Click the images to enlarge.

Well, it's all getting down to the real nitty gritty now. The door handles, heat shrink and power/reset switches all arrived this week so I now have all the final parts of this TARDIS build under my control. I think. First things first I had to finish painting it, and 3 coats later it was done. The pic below is only 2 coats, and you can still clearly see some brush marks.

Next up were the door handles. I bought these from a doll's house shop. I never realised there was such a market for so many tiny little things, but then I'd imagine that dolls house builders are not aware of the case modding scene so it's swings and roundabouts. Anyhoo, As they were so small (pic 1) I used a pair of tweezers to hold the nails in place as I hit them with my hammer. Sadly, the hammer was too big as when I was bashing the nails nearest to the handle, the handle bent. Luckily I'd bought 2 spare handles for just such an occasion and they were not so swiftly replace and now one nail top and bottom holds them in place. It took about half an hour to get them in, but they damn good if I say so myself. I also glued the lock into place.

Electrickery

I've never really understood electronics, so wiring the insides of the TARDIS was out of the question (I had enough to do without learning a new subject) so I kept with my plan of dismantling an illuminated fan. Two of the LEDs popped out reasonably easily, so I extended the wiring attached to these hoping to route the illumination into a suitable position within the case. I spent ages trying to position the LEDs so the front sign would get even illumination with no shadows. Unfortunately, with the position of the DVD drive this is all but impossible. If I put the LEDs directly behind the sign you get a big white spot and no light in the middle, if put the light in the middle you get the reverse.While I was testing this I managed to stop one of the LEDs from working, so now I'm left with 1 LED on a long piece of wire, and 2 stuck firmly into their holders. I might give up on illuminating the signs.

I also wired up the new power and reset switch. I nicked the connectors off an old case and cut it to length. However, as I took too many attempts to strip the end (I was using a pair of pliers) it was too short, so I patched it up and locked it into place. The white tubes you can see in the first pic is heat shrink. As the name suggests, you put this over a heat source and it shrinks, sealing the joint I've made. The LCD screen was hot glued next to it, so that's the door panel done. I was going to have the hard drive and activity LED on there but didn't bother.

During my recent bout of painting, I covered a sheet of OHP film in white primer. There were cut into to shape and hot glued into place as the windows. Below is a rear shot of the windows.

[justblair]

Please dont give up on illuminating the signs... Leds are not that scary to wire up.. Just four white leds with the right resistors in place. If you do a search on led wiring guide you will find a tutorial... It would seem a shame not to.

The tardis is looking fantastic... You are getting me into the idea of doing a K-9 for my flat file server. Think it would look great in my hallway rather than the mess of routers and nas drives that resides there at the moment.

Superb work!!! 11 out of 10.

[DaveW]

It's coming along incredible, and i can't wait to see this finished. Don't give up on those LED's, if you're having a lot of trouble with the lights, ask us . We'll be happy to work you through illuminating those lights: all you need to do is pop down to maplin, get yourself some LED's, the resistors, some heatshrink wire, and a single molex plug. You'll be running 2 lights on each line, and 4 lines for a total of 8 LED's, right? In the catalogue you can calculate the value of the reisistor you need, and your power source is a 5volt molex. The Heatshrink is keep everything tidy, it's not hard to use.

If you get the stuff, i can talk you through the wiring. My e-mail is in my sig, so feel free to e-mail me for more info.

The guys in Maplin are usually pretty helpful though, they might even be able to draw the circuit up for you.

-Dave

[GT40_GearHead]

dude you did a wonderfull jog, the paint came out great
one way you could make the LEDs give a equal light spread is to put a smal pice of frosted plexi betwen them and the sign, or could even use a pice of thin white plastic, and get a biger resistor for the LEDs so that they produce a dimer light

[m4gnum]

Thanks all, for the offers of help and the kind comments.

It's one of those annoying short updates I'm afraid. But, it does containing some super fun good news.


I've worked out a way to illuminate the signs nicely. If I drop the DVD drive back as far as it would go while still being able to insert a cd, which means I cutt the back stop out (Pic 1). I can then get 2 or 3 LEDs underneath the drive (See pic 2). My LED fan is now completely wrecked (with only 2 of the 4 LEDs still working). But, those 2 LEDs allowed me to test that it would work, so hurrah. I've bought 2 fans to replace that one, as I'll need all 4 LEDs. I bought 2 because I'm likely to get something wrong and need some spares. I also bought a pair of wire strippers, but they won't strip the thin wire, so they aren't much use.

I've printed out the signs and sprayed them with the magic aerosol. Well, I printed out 9 signs, on 3 sheets, as the first time I sprayed it I got the aerosol to close and it made the ink run. Second time the printer decided to leave small white gaps in the solid blue colour. Third times a charm though, so that'll do.
And finally, I stuck in the Ubuntu disk just to check everything was still working. Sadly, as soon as I hit the graphical install of it, it all went nasty. See pic 1. I checked all the leads, unplugged all the unessential stuff, still didn't work. RTFM'ed and tried to boot with "vga=771 noapic nolapic" whatever the heck that is. It worked though. Hurrah. There might be a slight change of plan on the distro, as there's a new distro of Gentoo with a graphical installer which makes life easier. (I once spent 4 hours installing Gentoo, and on a reboot it lost all the settings.)

[m4gnum]

The signs I had printed, over the course of a week, had turned nasty and blotchy. I get the feeling this SuperCal stuff doesn't work. So, I basically gave up and printed it onto some thin photo paper I had. The end effect is a totally solid blue where I want solid blue and nice sharp letters. AND the light even shines through the back. The hours I spent trying to get it the signs right, and all that time the photo paper is sticking 2 feet away from me. I also printed out the sign that sits on the front door onto the same stuff.

I mounted the LEDs by threading the wire through some heatshrink which I'd hot glued to the side of the DVD drive holder. It works really well and because the actual LED isn't glued in place I can move them around should the mood take me.

And, the very final thing to do was install Gentoo. But it didn't seem to want to install, so I stuck Ubuntu server on it instead. Works like a (slow) charm. Between attempting Gentoo and installing Ubuntu my slim line DVD drive broke. It's probably some wood dust inside. Damn. Again, I had spent hours getting the drive into place, getting the lights round it properly, and now it doesn't work. I was only going to use the drive to install the operating system and then use it on another mod. A waste of £60.

What did really begin to bug me was the power supply. The tiny fan in the power block creates a huge amount of noise. So I took all the neat and tidy wiring out and put in a normal sized ATX power supply. It makes in the inside look very ugly, but I'm not going to be looking at the inside. It also means I can run extra items off it should I wish.

That's it. The TARDIS is finished.

[m4gnum]

I'd like to say this has been enjoyable, but I'd be lying. The final month or so of work was a pain in the neck as I've now realised that having a computer in the shape of a TARDIS is pretty unpractical. And the computer itself is totally underpowered. You live and learn. But, here's those final photos.

On the up side, I have got a cracking idea for my next mod...

[DaveW]

Well done mate! I know how those last months feel, and you think to yourself every day: "This should be finished by now."

It wouldn't have been my choice for a first mod, because it's not easy. But I have to say...10 thumbs up. You've done a right pro job, congradulations!

-Dave