Create Your Own Mobile Monitor - Part 2

DIY

All parts have arrived and I have the time to play so…

Part 1

To understand this ongoing story better you might want to read part 1 first.

Part 2

Creating the casing for the monitor.

Here is a impression by picture:

First try to get the layout right for all the parts…

I want to monitor to be encased by wood. It was quite a bit of work and I broke a bit. Luckily I was wearing safety glasses and safety gloves. Thanks dad for always making an issue of safety :-).
That bit went flying at thousands of rpm a minute so it went of like a bullet. Power tools you got to love them :-)



As you can see in the next picture there are two brown spots in this piece of muyltiplex. I did not take notice but it might come to bite me…
When continuing I found that the piece has a bent in it. Not good for a monitor, but hopefully salvageable by putting it under traction. I did that over night before painting.
One of the darker spoits actually turned out to be beginning of rot. Very stange as I had it in a dry space?1 I hope it will not hurt my project as
I don’t want to start anew…


Putting the monitor under a lot of reverse stress to take out the bent in the wood and also to glue on the side pieces of the case. Hopefully that also helps with holding the wood straight.

It seems to have worked! The wood did not bent back when I released it the morning after and the glued pieces all stayed where they were supposed to be.

The wood I used is MDF and Mutliplex and but ‘suck’ a lot so I chose to first use some primer I had still lying around and could not keep for much longer. I think it was the correct choice…


Now for the final colour…

I will probably use a carbon look on the front, but time will tell.

Some findings:

  • The smaller rectangle in the middle I cut out is for the remote control receiver but I might have to solder the cables as the plug used is too bulky and might hinder the screen. This I can do but had not planned on
  • I want to attache the back panel with magnets so I can remove it easily, but I am not yet completely sure how I want to do it.
  • I have eliminated the battery problem for now by just not doing it (yet!) I have not yet received the goods to do this right and I when I do I might do this as a monitor stand?! future project?
  • I have no solution for a nice monitor stand yet. Ideas appreciated!
  • I made room for a Raspberry pi as I think I might want to use it as a media center or a picture monitor?!
  • I choose to only break out the HDMI as it is the only connector I use on a regular basis and the back panel will be removable for the other conectors when needed.
  • So for now there will be only an HDMI outlet, power and switch. I might want to also break out the Ethernet cable connector of the RPi, but I will first try it on WiFi.
  • No power is needed for the RPi as it can draw the power from the usb port of the driver board. This is nice. It will actually power up and down based on the power of the monitor.
  • Oh and where to store my remote when not using the monitor? hmmm.

That is it for now. See you soon for the final part of this totally fun project.

Fun

As a side note! I just want to impress how much fun it is to do this stuff. The whole process gives me tons of energy and just thinking about it makes me smile.
I can recommend anybody to undertake these journeys. Just get an idea and start. Solve 1 challenge and then the next. When you have solved enough challenges you get to have a thing you could probably have bought for cheaper and at a higher quality but with a lot less meaning to you!
I do not undertake these projects because I have to, but because they are fun to create! That is also why I love programming so much!
The kick of creating something just because you can is a real thrill.

Just do it!

Part 3

In the last part of this ongoing story I will show the finished product. Hopefully it is something I can be proud of :-)
I already know I loved every minute of the doing of it!

To be continued…