Introduction: SuperMatt's SuperBlackBox : 4 Computers, Gig-E Network Only 60+ Watts

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see also :
SuperMatt's Superbench - http://tinyurl.com/4e6drjl

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Problem :

I needed a complete system of computers (4 to 8), preferably in one easily movable box. It needed to be the lowest power possible, fanless preferably - with gigE connectivity and include backups for everything. The box needed to have space for other things - the computers were for regular daily use by my family (4 people), but I also down the road wanted them to control all the household and hometead electrical type equipment, security cameras, power systems etc.


Answer : SuperMatt's SuperBlackBox

(Please note: my fotos suck - the box in real life looks better than this).

This is what I have thus far (this will always be a work in progress) - 4 fanless Intel D945GSEJT computers with single SATA SSD drives or dual SATA white box HDD drives with twin Rosewill gigE network switches (one primary, one backup) all connected to a Clear wireless box. Total power consumption is well under 100 watts - the fanless computers average about 12 watts powered up and doing something simple in Windoze, and the network switches are maybe 5 watts. I use a couple of Philips TV/monitors that use about 17 watts each (or sometimes an older Acer monitor. The Intel motherboards can run dual monitors (1 vga 1 dvi-d)so you could run 8 monitors, 2 for each computer. The monitors now are connected using standard vga cables, but I have in the past used the extended connectors that allow you to run vga over cat5 - which works pretty well with just a slight degradation in pic quality. The philips are nice because they have VGA HDMI and component connections which allows me to run either my computer or my cctv cameras on them.

The other items in the SuperBlackBox (hereafter referred to as the SBB) are a couple of GVI camera multiplexers (10 watts each) for controlling CCTV cameras - these will handle up to 32 cameras and showing on 6 monitors and there is a timelapse VCR in there too. This configuration pretty much fills up one box, but I plan on building several of these for various future

The systems all currently come with 7 onboard USB ports + 2 serial ports - the comports run to the GVI mux and allow full computer control of mostly all mux functions (every button on the front of that box). The USB ports are going to run Parallax Propeller Quickstart boards - which have 30+ GPIO pins on them for controlling / monitoring pretty much anything you can think of.

(And yes this was all built on the Super Bench in my apartment(s)).


Supplies

I know when I read how-to guides the first thing I want to know is what is that, and where did that guy find that. So here goes :

The box : SKB Rack Case - cost about $200+ (altho I got my first one on ebay a year ago for $155 and it was a 12 rack).

(skbcases.com) this is the 1skb-r10 altho I also have one of the 1skbr12's as well. These are primarily for musicians for carrying rackmount equipment to their gigs, works very well for someone who has to move a lot. My job requires me to move about once a year and the last time we did it (remember family of 4) we were out the door 72 hours after the Go Code went out. To pack up this box takes about 60 seconds ( unplug the main power cord, the connections to the keyboard(s) and monitor(s), put the covers on, turn the knobs and away you go.

The motherboards - Intel D945GSEJT - ebay for about $75 now ($100 + when I bought them) also mini-box.com

fanless, low power (about 10 to 15 watts depending on how much crap you load on) - 2 GB RAM - 3 year warranty. I got an rma repair on two of these, one I dropped some crap on it, one I fried the serial ports. Intel replaced one with another used board and they never fixed the serial ports on the other - so 1 out of 2 in that department.

Buying now I would go with the DN2800MT instead as I dont think the 945 is still be manufactured.
http://www.mini-box.com/Intel-DN2800MT-Mini-ITX-Motherboard

Power supplies - 60+ watt : mini-box.com about $15
These I cut the wires to and soldered to '12v lighted round rocker swiches' so power to the individual boards can be completely turned off.

12v lighted round rocker switches ($2 various colors - ebay and sparkfun.com)

Concave button switches - sparkfun.com about $2
do NOT get the cheap ones (the convex ones)  for $1 - these were my first buy and I ended up tearing them all out and replacing them. Most of the fotos have the old buttons in them.

various LEDS

motherboard LED & switch wires - bgmicro.com search "Green diffused LED on 18"
these are easy to cut and place whereever you want and long enough to go anywhere (and did I mention cheap). Plus you get a free square led when you're done.

toggle switch - ebay various
this was a late addition. I added cheap USBtoSerial converters to power more serial devices, or in the case of the serial ports I fried, to have an alternative to the onboard ports. Unfortunately for some reason, these stopped me from getting into the BIOS by pressing F2 like I usually did. The D945GSEJT board tho, have a connector that forces a boot into the BIOS so I took some old toggle switches and wired them so that switched one way you boot normally, the other you go direct to the BIOS - not my favorite solution but it looks kind of cool and always works.  In the fotos the toggle switch is not on all the computers - late addition like I said, work in progress like I said.

HDD SSD - various newegg.com & ebay
I bought white box sata drives - 4 of them from an ebay seller - about $35 each I think. Now they're cheaper of course. Also got some SSD drives from newegg - 50 GB more than enough for me and I think I paid about $80 on special - and they add maybe 10 to 20 percent onto the 'perceived' speed of the systems but are more of a hassle to setup (trim etc). Overall, I like the SSD better, quieter, faster, lower power, more shock proof.

network switches - newegg special rosewill 8 port - $25 each & gig-E cant do better than that.
Even tho these are not specifically rackmount, I just hot-glued them to the top of the A-Neutronics switch and it looks and works fine.

A-Neutronics switch - about $50 on ebay
this is the only thing I would like to replace - I have been looking for a power switch that has individual switches on the front for the outlets on the rear is rackmountable and doesnt cost an arm and a leg. No luck so far, anyone knows of something like that let me know. One plus for the A-Neutronics is that the cord is like 15 feet long so that's handy.

The GVI switches if interested are still to be found on EBay for about $20 shipped. seller greenback logistics has them for $12 plus shipping. VCR also from him.

On a side note, I spent a lot of money trying all the various dvr card combos on ebay versus a standard cctv system and various IP based camera systems. The old style cctv cams worked much better IMO (for the money). For the cost of a single IP cam I can get an entire system of cams and controllers, and the quality of the picture is as good in most cases and because the frame rate is higher, I get more of a real-time view of what's on the camera. YMMV

Cables - I needed a LOT of cables, various short ones to the keystone panels on the rear - MONOPRICE.com - no one is better or cheaper. Lots of special connectors/adapters as well. The mux serial connection goes - USB to serial to 9 pin custom wired adapter to 25 pin custom adapter to soldered stripboard with Pololu.com spring terminals. It's a lot of small pieces.

I will double my recommendation of the Pololu.com spring terminals BTW - with stripboards and a good solder gun (Hakko is tops) and solder station (Hakko FX-888 is the best !) and desoldering Hakko 808 .- (twice as much as the 888 but worth every penny - pays for itself in recovered parts.

And last but not least the HOT GLUE gun - amazing stuff. The motherboards originally were attached but getting small plastic bushings from Lowes & Jerry's hardware, and standard machine screws. I countersunk the plastic bushings so the screw didnt stick out, then mounted them to the corners of the motherboard. I then used adheive velcro dots (ebay) to hold this to the plastic signboard used for lining the rack shelves. This didnt work so well. My original idea was that this would make it easy to take things off and on for maintenance. In reality, the adhesive stuck sometimes and sometimes not and always when you didnt want to. And in the first move of the box, some things came loose and banged around, probably because the box was not treated very well, flipped upside down a couple of times. Instead, a better solution was just to do the same thing with the bushings and machine screws and then hot glue each bushing to the plastic signboard (Lowes - used for making realtor type signs - cut to size with linoleum knife). This worked great, but you had to be fast when you put the glue on and flipped the MB into place. Plastic signbaord is also great, elevates the board to the right height, but not to high to go above 1U in the rack case. PLUS insulates everything from the metal rack shelf.

Rack shelves - these were surprisingly PICKY to get them to fit correctly. The only ones I found that worked well were the Quest rack shelves - firefold.com has them as do others. NOTE : in order to get the buttons to fit, I had to use a hacksaw to cut and bend the area around the front of the shelf. Wish there was a better way to do this - but it worked ok and I wasnt going to give up the idea of having big colored (cheap) buttons.

On the front of the rackshelves for the panels, I used monoprice.com - It think these blank panels are like $3 each in qty. You need to drill the holes for all the buttons and led's of course, but not that hard to do. And if you make a mistake (I made several) I just took the black rack screws and put them in the mistake holes and it looks like they belong there (can you spot the boo-boos ? :)

I'm happy with the performance of the system - altho others might not be. I use it for development work, general internet stuff and interfacing with microcontrollers. Power use was a prime consideration as some day this will be on an alt-energy type system. Reliabilty and redundancy (not the same as complexity) was also important. Being able to fix/modify was also key (which leaves out any form of laptop). Another recommedation : terabyteunlimited.com's Boot software - I can backup and restore a whole drive in 10 to 15 minutes and transfer it to another computer. I do this periodically to fight viruses etc. OS is a flavor of windows xp (winflp) and boots in maybe 15 to 20 seconds and takes maybe a gig or two of space.

Anyways, that's about it. Happy to answer any questions, this was over a year of work (on and off) and I like it. Does everything I need it to, looks nice, and cost far less than a single high end computer.

Later.