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One of the things that we try to do in our house is generate as little trash as possible. We're certainly not perfect, but it does usually take us a couple months to fill a single curbside sized trash can (excluding our recent construction project.) One of the benefits of being in the mindset of not generating waste, is that you start getting in the mind-set of re-purposing and reusing things. This translates well to my ham radio hobby and my on-going shack build, as much of the stuff in the shack so far has been salvage, dumpster saves, or at least purchased used. With this little bit of background, I'd like to share another progress update, because it was done with mostly re-purposed stuff.
As I was planning dc power distribution and monitoring for the shack, I had made up my mind that I wanted to use an electrical cabinet and some din-rail mounted stuff for equipment power distribution, dc breakers, fusing, control relays etc. I wasn't quite satisfied with the price/size combinations I was coming across as I googled around, so I set the thought aside while doing other tasks for a few days. One of those tasks happened to be breaking down some work equipment that needed to go to e-waste. As I was staring at the metal box I was pulling the stuff out of (that would have ended up in dumpster at work) it dawned on me - here's the cabinet for my power distribution!
The equipment that was originally in the box had a small operator interface, so the box was designed with holes for a display to show through. Rather than just have a weird hole, I went back to my re-purposing mind set. I pulled out an old college project where I had used a raspberry pi and a small display, and gutted it :-) I figured I could use the pi and display to write myself some power monitoring software to keep track of what the shack is doing. For a gut check, I put the display on my desk, connected the pi, and powered up, just to make sure it still worked, and then I laid the panel over top of it, to see if I could get the overscan settings on the pi adjusted so it would line up with the opening:
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The display that I had was purchased some time ago, but it was one of these, that can be had from Amazon for pretty cheap. This isn't touchscreen or anything, but for my purposes that would be just fine, considering it was something I already had! It took some fiddling with the overscan settings on the pi, but I was able to get the display area of the screen to a size that would perfectly fit the hole in the front panel of the enclosure. |
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Since it looked like I was going to be able to make this work, I grabbed some U channel aluminum at the local big-box hardware store, and whipped up a little frame to hold the monitor in place.
I ended up putting a thin strip of weatherstripping in the channel on the side that would be the front of the monitor. I then drilled and tapped holes on the back side, so that I could put the monitor in the frame, and put in a couple screws with just enough tension to press the edge of the monitor into the weather stripping to hold the monitor nicely in place. Once it was in the box, I was pumped about the way it turned out!
The pictures above shows the box with the outside door swung open. When that door is closed, there is just a smaller opening so that the display is still visible. This box also had the benefit of being nicely vented, so heat build-up shouldn't be an issue (I can always add a fan if it is.)
Now I just need to start adding the power distribution parts, sensors for monitoring them, and write some software!
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