Hello again, fellow readers and fixers! Lately, we looked again at our media centre build, so that we can finish the project. We tried to position the Pine H64 single board computer within the external hard drive chassis. This is for making the ports we want to use easy to access. After some time, we realised that we had a problem.
Not the best candidate after all…
It turned out that the metal cover was difficult to work around, since it blocks easy access to ports whichever way we positioned the SBC. We considered cutting through part of the cover to allow access to the desired ports. But the case metal is quite thick and difficult to cut, and if we mess up, then we end up creating more problems for ourselves…
Also, the pass through cables turned out to be hard to route to the back of the enclosure. Given the limited space, it makes including fans for active cooling that much more difficult. We’ll still hang on to the pass through cables, though; they will still come in handy for something else!
All in all, we just couldn’t turn my external hard drive enclosure into a media centre PC as we hoped. But we’re not giving up yet! We just need to find a suitable alternative that works just as well!
Time for Plan B…
And so, we looked around in our spares room for other items that can house a single-board computer. We found an old wireless router, but when we opened it up, we realised that it wasn’t suitable. Soon after, Gareth found an old set of small speakers in our junk collection brought them into our repair cafe.
And here it is, in it’s own glory! It has a removable front cover that has a layer of fabric over it. This works as a free dust filter, which makes it perfect for our project. No need to use more resources to acquire new dust filters here! We opened it up, and removed the four long screws holding the speakers and chassis together. One or two of the screws were a pain to remove, so we won’t use them when we put the casing together. When we put the SBC inside the speaker case, it turned to be perfect in size!
Getting to work again
So Gareth got to work with making holes in the case for all the ports. He first used a drill to cut large holes in the case, then filed each hole so that the USB ports and Ethernet port poke through at the back.
He did the same for the HDMI port, power jack and audio jack, which we plug in from the side. These holes are large enough so that it’s easy for HDMI cables, headphones and speakers to plug in. In fact, the cables we tried plug in easily, even with the Pine H64 positioned around the middle of the speaker. Not bad at all!
We turned on the board again, and played the Big Buck Bunny video on YouTube, while checking the temperatures. With the fabric cover off, the SoC reached temps of around the mid-60s, and low-70s with the cover on. There was some choppiness with video playback as it got warm, so some active cooling is in order here. We have some 5V fans salvaged from old laptops, that are good candidates. Our plan here is to use them as exhaust fans to remove excess heat from inside the speaker casing.
Nearing completion!
So yeah, we’re getting close to finishing our media centre build! We’ll create an opening at the back of the speaker case to accommodate the fan. We also want to secure the Pine H64 in place, in case any knocks dislodge the board out of position.
We also wanted to include a hard drive or SSD that runs from the USB 3.0 port inside the casing. While it makes the system run faster than using a microSD card or eMMC module, limited space is available inside the speaker case. The USB 3.0 port is still usable for plugging in an external hard drive or SSD, so we’ll use it for playing media.
Finally, we’ll install Armbian onto the eMMC module, and test everything to check that it all works! We’re excited to showcase our completed media centre PC soon. In the meantime, just keep calm and carry on fixing!