My DIY DJ booth with built in MP3 servers. What do you think of it?

[dicky]

Hi Guys

Not sure where best to post this but I wanted to show you what I have been up to the last couple of days

I bought a couple of old Dell servers of this guy on ebay

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/400838850425?_trksid=p2059210.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

These are 19" Rack mount units, 1U (4.5cm) high and 55cm deep and quite high spec: I expecrted 3.0GHz but actually received units that were 3.4GHz Dual Core Pentium, 2Gb Ram.

They cost me £100 for the two inc postage

They came without hard drives so I fitted an 64Gb SSD I had lying around in one of them and bought and SSD for the other one (£35)

I also fitted a couple of old 320Gb SATA drives I had lying around, one in each PC to store my music

Windows 7 installed without problem (other than you can not boot from USB on these servers so used an old IDE DVD drive I have lying around to load the OS) as the server also had IDE as well as 2xSATA ports

There is a PCI-E expasion slot so I fitted a soundcard in one of the servers which means I can use it as a backup playout without a DJ controller


I used the boards that I made to fit on my 6ft DJ booth as a base. I screwed some wooden battens on to mount the PC server

I just used a couple screws in each batton for now to hold them in place

(see pics) below

The bottom board is the same depth as the server (56cm) the top board is a bit deeper (60cm)

This is beause these servers have front mounted VGA and USB (plus on the rear as well)

I want to use the front connectors to make it easy to plug everything in, so the top board overhangs by 4cm to protect the connectors form me leaning against them.

Now I fitted the top board. The screws are all countersunk to get a smooth surface. I screwed this all on securely with quite a few screws.

See pics

You can see the front of the PC unit here.

[dicky]

Now I had the top secured properly to all the battons, I removed the few screws holding the base panel on, and removed the base and PC server

Now I covered the top with thick cloth - I fix this on using Carpet Tile Glue

The cost of the 9mm Plywood, battons and cloth came to about £25

The base panel had already been covered and glued with cloth before I started assembly

Once the tops were covered in cloth and the glue had dried, I refitted the servers (remembering to put them upside down!) and refitted the base panel. This time I used more screws to hold it firmly.

There are a couple of battons on the base panel as you can see - these slot between the horizontal metal bars on my DJ booth, stopping the panels from sliding around

[dicky]

Once I had built both panels, I set everything up on the DJ booth

Each panel with the server weighs less than 15Kg and is just 6.5cm thick.

There are handy connectors for VGA and USB front and back

As these are old Web Servers they are very ruggedly built and should withstand some hard use

Everything plugged in and powered up, and some lovely blue and Green LED light up (totally essential to have those of course)

So there you have it - DIY DJ booth panels with two integrated MP3 servers, giving easy connectivity and a nice uncluttered booth surface, and much cheaper than two laptops.

My panels are both 3ft x 2ft as I have a 6ft booth, but you could easily do the same using 2ftx2ft panels for a 4ft booth

What do you think?

Rich
PS next project - build a matching (sloping) flight case for the mixer

[Nakatomi]

Heheh that's pretty tidy.. but a total weight of 30 kilos is maybe a bit steep... cheaper than 2 laptops yes, but as light & convenient? You get what you pay for.

The cost/weight trade-off aside it's something I've been tempted to do myself.

Be careful with your VGA connections etc. I'd be tempted to fit sacrificial cables in the way & mount those to save wear & tear on the onboard connectors. VGA *should* be robust enough to handle a good few rigging & de-rigging cycles but you wouldn't be able to say the same of HDMI for example. I worry about the longevity of USB connectors - from my research into this in my last day job I found the insertion/removal cycle lifetimes was as low as 500 even on expensive brands like Molex.

[dicky]

Oh I forgot to add

The two monitors are 17" Digimate.

Thre are quite a few on ebay secondhand - such as this one

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Digimate-L-1718-17-LCD-Monitor-built-in-Speakers-for-Desktop-PC-/191473652197?pt=UK_Computing_ComputerComponents_Mo nitors&hash=item2c94b811e5

I like these because the design of the stands allow you to fold them completely flat if you so wish, making them ideal for use on a DJ booth

I shopped around and got a couple of them second hand off ebay - at £15 each

The servers are mounted in place using the thumbscrews on the front (same as in a 19" rack mount cab) and can be removed and replaced fairly quicky by sliding them out as normal for 19" rack kit.

[Andy P]

nice - love a bit of DIY and seems quite a cheap rig in the end

[hadyn]

well done on securing these away under the shelf but i would be worried about the weight.
you could do better with a i3 or i5 pc barebones system which is a fully working pc and the size of a fag packet and all you have to add is laptop memory and ssd drive. the sound is 7.1 intergrated as well for back up purposes.
check out maplins for these pcs and the i3 specced one is 200.00 at present.
you can also get a less specced one which is a celeron duel core for about 110.00.
sorry forgot to add a link

http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/gigabyte-gb-bxi3h-4010-brix-barebone-pc-intel-i3-dual-core-17-ghz-a40nq

[Andy P]

1702017021

I use an NUC pc which fits to the back of the monitor.

Ignore the tape I had to get the bracket bent a bit as it was floppy when I first got it. But its ace spec and take zero space

pc spec
Intel i5 3550 3.3ghz
8 GB corsair vengeance low profile ram
Intel HD 4400 graphics chip with VGA/DVI/HDMI
OZ Agility 128gb SDD
WD 1TB HDD
Windows 8 and VDJ 8

[dicky]

Yes the boards are a bit hefty - but I feel that helps to make the DJ booth more stable by lowering the centre of gravity, as otherwise most of the weight is in the gantry above the booth

I am well within max load specs for the both DJ stand and the gantry by the way

I'm not sure they do weigh asmuch as 15Kg. The servers weigh 10Kg (according to the listing on ebay anyway) and I just took a guess at the weight of two sheets of 9mm ply and the battons

Those little mini PCs do look the dogs danglies however I was trying to put together an integrated rig with built in backup/redundancy at as low a price as I could so I guess my priorities were slightly different

@attack the dancefloor
Yeah the monitors with built in PCs are very neat. What do you use as backup on your rig though if the PC-monitor fails?

[Andy P]

Laptop in car. I started off with the laptop so its still all set up - just needs the music updated but I use vdj8 content unlimited so not an issue

I do like that shelf however and often fancies doing something similar