Project: Reality Bytes

[The boy 4rm oz]

Hey man, I was just wondering if those fans you are using were AC Ryan Blackfires? If so do you find them loud? They are rated at almost 29dba and just thought I may ask.

[Xperiment]

Looking good so far. If the power seems unstable, it might be an idea to put a capacitor across the output to smooth things a little. Got any dead electronics lying around?

A while ago I did strip a DVD player and an old motherboard of all its caps and other bits before I threw it away. So will try out a few different caps to see what happens.

However, It seems transistors don't like short circuits lol

Will have to pop over to maplins again, cant be doing with their delivery again.

Hey man, I was just wondering if those fans you are using were AC Ryan Blackfires? If so do you find them loud? They are rated at almost 29dba and just thought I may ask.

Yes dude, they are AC Ryan Blackfires. As for the noise, it depends where you mount them, what voltage you run them at etc.

I find that at 5v they are silent, of if they have nothing directly touching them at 12v again silent.
But if you run them on a rad at 12v they can be a tad noisy. I tend to run all mine at 5v-7v.

Good fans though, would recommend them.

[The boy 4rm oz]

Well I will be mounting my radiator like you have, same fan and radiator orientation. I will also have silicon washes on the fans and radiator to try and reduce noise. My motherboard will be powering the fans so I guess that will regulate voltage and noise depending on the heat of the system.

[TEAMIKKE]

AC ryan fans are noisy but they move a lot of air! You have to make choises or let them run @ 5V indeed.

[SgtM]

OT:
Dude, I need to know what settings you are using on your camera. I have the same one, and can't get mine to come out as good as yours.

Back on topic:
The project is looking great man. Keep up the good work.

[Xperiment]

OT:
Dude, I need to know what settings you are using on your camera. I have the same one, and can't get mine to come out as good as yours.

I use macro mode and auto focus on the camera itself. Quality is set to 4MF. I use a tripod to keep it steady.

Self timer helps for the closeup shots to keep the picture sharp. Also try half pressing the 'shoot' button until a small yellow box comes on the screen, wait a couple of seconds then fully press. I think this increases the shutter speed for a sharper image.

I also take about 3-10 pictures of the same thing then pick the best one.

As for editing the picture once taken, I move to photoshop, select a square area and crop, then reduce it to 500x500 pixels, this seems to improve sharpness a little more.

Hope that helps.

Back on topic:
The project is looking great man. Keep up the good work.

Thanks, slow but steady at the moment.

[Xperiment]

Update: LCD Screen VGA Connection

I really want to get this screen up and running now, what with waiting on deliveries and blowing up transistors it just seems to be taking forever to make progress on it.

So today I wired up the video inputs to a VGA socket. The plan was to do this using a bare 15 pin D-Sub plug which would then plug into a VGA -> DVI adapter.

When I grabbed the adapter I noticed how easy it would be to plug the wires straight into it rather than solder them to the VGA plug. So I cut some lengths of solid core black wire and slotted them into the adapter:

Then labeled each one so I knew which wire was from which pin:

Used a hot glue gun to keep them in place:

And used heatshrink to cover up the wires:

Lastly I connected up the wires to the loom already fitted to the screens inputs and ran it through the case, hidden behind the radiator, before coming through the rear expansion slots and into the graphics card outputs:

Now that this is done all I need is a new transistor and it will, at last, be ready to switch on.

[xmastree]

However, It seems transistors don't like short circuits lol

Ouch... I saw the pic before I read the words, and thought that had happened when you plugged it in...

What are you using for a heatsink?

Didn't you consider soldering directly to the card from the inside?

[Xperiment]

I was just testing the circuit and the ground probe on the multimeter touched the live input. Quite a big bang, lots of pretty sparks and that piece that broke off hit me on the chin lol, live and learn.

No heatsinks at the moment, have got the insulators you suggested, so will bolt to case.

As for the VGA wire, I would love to solder to the card but I know it would be the most expensive solder job I ever did, the card would have been dead within minutes.

[xmastree]

that piece that broke off hit me on the chin lol, live and learn.

Close. Were you wearing safety glasses?

I used to work with X-ray machines. they had sixty transistors like that (but larger) on heatsinks. In four groups of fifteen (in an H-bridge configuration). If something went wrong with the switching, they went off like a machine gun until the fuse blew.

We put perspex covers over them for that reason.