mediaBIN3.0 Weighted Companion Cube Build

I could always fly to the land down under, and have a nice face to face chat with you too.

 

Okay, I've got a teaser for you guys...

The hearts on the disks are done. They only need to dry and then I'll coat them with clear paint. You might be wondering: "How did you get that strikingly realistic hand painted finish my dear man?". I'll tell you - it's a tried and tested technique used widely by artists for a number of years now. I believe it's called painting the damn thing by hand... No it doesn't have perfect lines, no I couldn't find spray paint with the EXACT same shade, yes I had to mix it from scratch and no I don't care because if you look at the hearts in the game they are really weathered and scratched so it's not hard to imagine that they were hand painted in the beginning....

 

Wow, I'm keeping an eye on this thread - It will be a sexy rig. xD

 

The hearts look horrible. Imho you can just throw the whole project in the trash. Congratulations, you have ruined it for us, I hope you are happy. Are you happy? ARE YOU?

No seriously, the shade is perfect, and the drawing superb - you have two skilled hands my man. Too bad if someone would... steal them.

 

Haha, you might change your mind if you heard that the cube was complete

I don't know if you would like to see some pictures now though? Since it's all ruined and everything... sigh.

 

nice painting

 

Hi guys. It's taken quite some time, but what I have here is the final photos of the case . It is, as you will notice, missing a power supply which I will be getting on Monday. I'll post the final internal photos when I've installed the pico 90.

So let's start with a normal perspective view just to wet your appetite...


Another angle


Now the front...


... and the back. Can't really tell the difference except from the top heart orientation can you?


Now the top...


... and the bottom. This one you can tell (almost missed it eh?) by the screws bolting into the other half of the case as well as the added highly rigid foam feet


The back of the cube with the heart cover removed


One of the bottom corners removed by removing the M6 bolt going through all the layers.


... and all the corners gone. Notice the placement of the screws that hold the internal structure. They were placed to be under the corners and there's small holes drilled in the corners just above the screw heads to allow the corner to fit flush with the cube.


The top half of the cube dismantled showing the internal structure.


Close-ups of the internal structure... You will notice the missing pico!





The internal view of the top half of the cube. It looks pretty messy but all the wires are glued in place and routed as cleanly as possible.


The top corners were screwed in place by three self-tapping screws after drilling holes into the perspex and corners.


The bottom part placed onto the top part again before tightening the bolts. The holes are countersunk.


Another perspective


The lighting. They were powered by an external power source given that the pico isn't installed yet. The whole cube is covered in LED's. This is viewed from the left...


... and from the right...


... and the back, showing the power supply module feeding power into the cube...


... even the bottom is covered


A close-up of the top. You can see some separation in the light, but it's not that critical.


A shot in the dark. The light is ONLY coming out of the slots on the cube and there's no light leaking into the inside of the cube and coming out of the heart covers.


Now when I turn down the UV, the cube is in red mode


... and the other way around in UV mode. Interestingly, the camera sensor, being more sensitive to the shorter wavelengths, captures a blue light although it looks purple-ish in real life


Finally, I leave you with a comparison between the in-game cube and the final mediaBIN3.0 Weighted Companion Cube!


Soooo, there you have it. Hope you guys are satisfied with the end-result! I know I am

 

OMFG that is simply amazing

 

Oh. my. fricken. God. That thing is so perfect. Congratulations zAAm for creating such a great enclosure and pleasing my eyes. They are so pleased they want a cigarette Seriously dude I take my hat off to you.

 

/head explosion

Wow, that's awesome. You should make a case mod gallery for it.

 

Thanks guys... Mmm, maybe I should post a pic or so in the case mod gallery and see what happens

 

Just for fun, a size comparison alongside a DVD 50pack spindle (only thing of standard comparable size I could find as I quickly looked around)

 

So, how much do you want for it?

 

Unfortunately I'm not gonna sell it After the amount of work I've put into it, I don't think you'll be able to afford it!

 

Wow... Just amazing!

 

OMG this is awsome, give us a link from the gallery, and we shall all vote 10/10

 

Haha, I'm just interested if people will like my work. I don't really mind though, cause I will be the one using it

The gallery link: http://www.techpowerup.com/gallery/2435.html

 

you sir get a from the doc
are you planning on doing something else in the future?

 

Thanks!

At the moment I don't have any inspiration yet on another mod, but will see as we go along... I think my next project will be computer unrelated as I'll be defretting and modifying a bass guitar I'm looking at

I still need to post some pictures of the cube in action - it's already doing its duties with the RAID0 HDD array replaced with a single Samsung EcoGreen 1TB drive. Will add another one later maybe, but I need to look into some better airflow for the hard drives as they're getting quite hot - 50C for the current drive.

 

So the Atom 330 was pretty much useless in the end. I just upgraded it with the following:

- Intel DH67CF LGA1155 Media Series motherboard
- Intel i5 2400S 2.5GHz Low-voltage CPU
- 8GB Corsair DDR3-1333
- 1TB Samsung F2 EcoGreen (for the moment it's not used as a NAS so capacity isn't top priority)
- PicoPSU 120W w/ 110W Adapter

It runs MUCH better (I'd say about 5 times as fast) and I can use it for testing my software projects!

Airflow is a bit of an issue as the i5 gets to around 70 degrees with the stock cooler in the confined space when stress testing, but normal use won't see anywhere near that.

Now it serves as a pretty decent media server and can still be used in the CPU and RAM intensive testing of my software programs...

So now the Companion Cube can be considered a companion once again!

 

sweet now must show the companion cube running portal 2. lol

 

yeah, you should make a new one based on one of the new cubes, thanks for the update, any screens of the internals??