Parts List

• Case - Fractal Design Define Mini
• Power Supply - Antec Earthwatts 380W
• Motherboard - ASRock B75 Pro3-M
• Processor - Intel Pentium G630T (2.3GHz, Dual-Core, 35W)
• RAM - 8GB GSkill DDR3
• Hard Drives - (4) 3TB Western Digital Red
• OS Flash Drive - 4GB Sandisk Cruzer Fit

Hardware

For my server build I not only wanted to keep the cost down, I also wanted it to be as quiet and power efficient as possible. I chose the case because of its noise reduction features in addition to its build quality and 6 hard drive bays. The motherboard offers 8 SATA ports and 4 RAM slots for future expansion. I was planning on using an Intel Celeron processor, but the Pentium G630T is more efficient, generates less heat, and doesn't cost much more. I considered reusing some of my 2TB Western Digital Green drives from my HTPC, but in the end I decided to get 3TB Red Drives instead. Besides their larger capacity, they are specifically designed for this application as well as offering a better warranty and support from the manufacturer.

Software

FreeNAS has a lot of useful documentation, but I found Engadget's tutorial to be a better starting point for basic setup. This got me started with basic CIFS sharing that I can access with both my Windows & Linux PCs. I set up my 4 hard drives as a RAID Z2 array which should be able to survive one hard drive failure without affecting performance and two hard drive failures without data loss. After creating the array, I ended up with about 5.5TB of space available for storage. This should be more than enough for the forseeable future, but I can aways get two more hard drives and recreate the array to increase my storage capacity. Another key part of this setup is the recognition that my server will be used for backups only, never as the sole repository of data. 

I ran into some issues, however, when I tried to RSYNC from my HTPC to the FreeNAS box. Using a scheduled RSYNC every night is how I plan to backup my media files and is critical to my local backup strategy. After a lot of Googling and experimenting I discovered how to properly setup the permissions on both the FreeNAS server and my HTPC in order to be able to RSYNC properly. 

For my purposes I only have a Guest account on the FreeNAS server. This account does not require a password and has full access to all of the files in the share. On the HTPC side I setup Ubuntu to mount the remote share every time it boots by modifying the "/etc/fstab" file with the following line:

//192.168.10.200/Archive     /mnt/Server cifs guest,uid=joe,gid=joe 0 0

In this application 192.168.10.200 is the IP Address of the server as perminently assigned by my router. "Archive" is the name of the CIFS share I created on the FreeNAS server. The directory "/mnt/Server" is the local directory on my HTPC that I created to mount the server's share to. CIFS (Common Internet File System) is the file sharing standard. The next three additions are key to getting the permissions correct:  "guest" is the user ID on the FreeNAS server, "uid=joe" designates my user ID on my HTPC, and "gid=joe" designates my group ID on my HTPC. When the server's share is properly mounted I then had to make sure that the files I planned to share gave full read/write access to both my user and group. 

With these set properly I can now RSYNC my media files from my HTPC to the server with the following command:

rsync -avru --delete --progress /local_directory/ /mnt/Server/remote_directory

Conclusion

Now that I have my permissions and RSYNC issues resolved, I am very pleased with my FreeNAS server. With the fan speeds set low it is very quiet and over a week of use it had an average power usage of 48 Watts. File transfer speeds are also pretty good over my newly installed Gigabit network. FreeNAS is a versatile platform and I look forward to learning more about it in the future. 

There are a lot of rechargeable lithium battery packs available. Some have a lot of capacity and others can be used with solar panels, however, I could never find one that fits my requirements. The solar models that I've seen generally don't have much capacity and use such small solar panels that they don't charge very fast. Then I came across Adafruit's USB/Solar Lithium Ion Charger board and it solves all of my problems. This board has a lot of cool features: it can charge a battery via a solar panel or any other 5V input and it can deliver power to the MintyBoost from both the input and the battery simultaneously. In this way you could charge a device on a not so sunny day by drawing some power from the solar panel and the rest from the battery.

My main goal for this project is to have a versatile power pack for use when I go camping/backpacking. I have a fair amount of devices that I typically bring with me that can be charged via USB: camera, headlamp, UV water purifier, cell phone, mp3 player, etc. The 6600mAh battery can charge any of these devices multiple times, providing many days of capacity before needing to be recharged. On sunny days the 3.4W solar panel can recharge the battery if I am away from power for a long period of time. At full power the solar panel will take about 12 hours to fully charge the battery. While this is a long time, for my use case this should be fine as I will most likely be topping off the battery with the solar panel not charging it from zero. I like this solar panel for its combination of size and capacity. A larger panel could charge the battery faster, but would be a lot less portable.

Adafruit has a detailed tutorial that explains how the charger board works and shows how to wire it to the other components. Basically the charger board is connected to both the battery and the MintyBoost and uses either a USB or solar panel input to provide input power when you want to charge the battery. The charger also has the option to output the charging status (charging, charging complete) to external LEDs.

For this project I used a red LED to indicate that the unit was charging and a green LED to indicate that the battery was fully charged. I also isolated the battery from the remainder of the system using a power switch. This prevents the small self drain inherent to the MintyBoost from discharging the battery when I am not using the unit. You just have to remember to turn it on when you want to charge the battery. In addition I used a coaxial power jack for the power input and modified both the solar panel and a USB cable with matching coaxial power plugs of the same size. The final piece was using a scavenged panel mount usb port for the MintyBoost's output. 

I have to say that I really like this setup. I can charge all of my devices and when placed in the sun, the solar panel started charging the battery with no problem.

Specs

• Case - Antec ISK110 VESA
• CPU - Intel Celeron G530 (2.4GHz)
• Motherboard - Asus P8H61-I (Intel H61 chipset)
• RAM - 4GB G.Skill DDR3 1333
• Hard Drive - 320GB Western Digital Scorpio Blue

Performance, Power Usage & Noise

I have now built a couple of systems using the Sandybridge based Intel Celeron processor and I have to say that I am impressed. While I wouldn't want to use it for video compression, for typical computer usage this processor is plenty fast. This system doesn't sweat running multiple ham radio related apps at once.

With the CPU as the only major component to power, this system is a power miser. At idle it uses about 20 watts and during typical usage it generally stays under 30 watts. Not bad at all.

The same goes for the noise generated by this system. The stock Intel heatsink & fan keeps the processor cool without rising above a whisper. Overall I am very pleased with this system. It's the perfect combination of size, performance, quiet operation, and low cost.

When I bought my house this spring, I immediately started planning an HF antenna for my ham radio station. It's been several years since I last had a permanent base station set up and I wanted to get on the air. After evaluating my options, I decided that a loop antenna would be my best option. The biggest advantage for me is that a large loop antenna fed with ladder line allows for good performance on a wide range of frequencies using a single antenna. This design also allows me to maximize the amount of antenna that I can fit on my 1/2 acre lot (an 80 meter loop is only 72ft on a side vs the 135ft overall length of an 80 meter dipole) without having to put up masts or towers.

The general idea of a loop skywire is to put up as much wire as possible, without worrying about cutting it to resonance, and feed it with ladder line. Since ladder line exhibits very low loss compared to coaxial cable, even with a large impedance mismatch, the total amount of signal loss in the ladder line will be minimal. With a good antenna tuner between the ladder line and the radio, all of the HF ham bands should be available.

Components

For wire I purchased Wireman #531, which is insulated wire made up of stranded 13 AWG copper-clad steel. The steel core makes it strong (400 lb breaking strength) and helps minimize stretch, while the copper cladding gives it good electrical conductivity. The insulation helps to protect the wire from the weather. 

The feedline I chose is 300 ohm ladder line, which is a little harder to find than its 450 ohm cousin. Some ladder line is cheaply made, but this type from DX Engineering uses 18 AWG copper-clad steel and works very well. They also make a great antenna feed point kit with built in strain relief slots for use with their 300 ohm ladder line. It is well worth the money.

While I could have used a balanced tuner, or some other type of manual antenna tuner, I decided to go with an automatic antenna tuner for my station due to their ease of use and their ability to store impedance matches to memory. The memories allow the tuner to pull up previous tuning settings without having to rematch the radio to the antenna, saving a lot of time. I use a LDG AT-200ProII in my station and it has worked great so far with my loop antenna. I chose this model for its wide impedance matching range, its ability to store 4000 frequency & impedance combinations, and its 200 Watt power rating. Although I don't plan on using more than 100 Watts in my station, the 200 Watt model is only slightly more expensive and because of its higher power rating it will hopefully be even better equipped to withstand the high impedance mismatches that this antenna presents.

The final piece of this arrangement is the balun. In this case I used a high power current balun between the ladder line and the antenna tuner. This device blocks the current on one side of the ladder line from continuing on to the shield of the coax on the other side. In this way it transforms the balanced load of the antenna and feedline into an unbalanced load for use with the antenna tuner and radio. I could have made my own balun, but I decided to buy a DX Engineering BAL050-H10-AT. This is heavy-duty (rated for 10KW) balun designed for exactly this type of application and is much better constructed than anything I could have made on my own. 

Construction

Putting up the loop was a relatively straightforward process. The first step was to pick which trees to put the support ropes in. I don't have a ton of options on my small lot, but four trees were spaced appropriately for me to make a trapezoidal shaped loop. To get the ropes (I used 3/16" Dacron) into the trees I used some light nylon cord tied to a wrench and tossed the wrench over the highest branch I could reach. I then pulled the heavier rope up over the branch. Next I attached the insulators that I had made using 1 inch 45 degree PVC elbows (painted black for stealth) and bungie cords. The bungies act as a stress relief between the trees and the antenna, thereby allowing the trees to move in the wind without jerking the antenna too hard. I used bungies on three of the four corners, leaving only the corner nearest the feed point without one. 

I then ran the antenna wire through the insulators until I had both ends at the location of the feed point. By taking the slack out of the ropes I was able to start trimming the antenna wire such that when the insulators were lifted as high as I could get them the antenna wire was tight. After a few adjustments, and some branch trimming, I was able to get the antenna in the air. I then set the antenna back down and attached the ladder line to the feed point and raised the antenna to its final position.

Finally I mounted the balun to the side of the house and ran the ladder line to the balun. To support the ladder line I attached some rope to the feedline with zip ties and hoisted it using an eyebolt screwed into the eave of the house. I also made a spacer/strain relief for the ladder line to keep it away from the aluminum siding on my house. This is necessary because if ladder line is too close to anything conductive it can unbalance the feedline, thereby causing it to radiate like the antenna.

Performance

After trimming, my loop ended up being 215 feet in circumference and uses 47 feet of ladder line. I lucked out on the length of ladder line that I needed; you have to be careful not to use a length that is harmonically resonant on any of the frequencies you wish to operate, otherwise the feedline could radiate and cause interference. While this antenna is technically a little short for use on the 80 meter band, it will tune on that band along with all of the remaining HF ham bands (except 160 meters).

Considering the limitations of my property in terms of the size and height (around 30 feet) of the antenna, I couldn't be happier with it so far. I love the ability to operate from 3.5 to 30 MHz without having to switch antennas. Overall performance has been great. In my limited time using my new station I have been able to contact stations in Europe and throughout the US, as well as have a lot of fun in the Pennsylvania QSO Party (my home state) where I was able to contact pretty much every station that I could hear. 

 New PC Specs

• Case - Antec Solo
• Power Supply - Corsair CMPSU-450VX (450W), reused from previous build
• CPU - Intel Core i7-2600 (3.4GHz)
• CPU Cooler - Xigmatek HDT-S1284F, with ACK-I5363 mounting bracket
• Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-H67A-UD3H-B3 (Intel H67 chipset)
• GPU - ATI Radeon 4850, reused from previous build
• RAM - 8GB G.Skill Dual Channel DDR3 1600
• Hard Drive - 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX (64MB cache, SATA 6Gb/s)
• Optical Drive - LG 22x DVD Burner (SATA), reused from previous build

Performance

For video compression tasks using Handbrake and Adobe Premiere Elements, this new PC is easily three times faster than my old Core 2 Duo machine. It is also noticably faster at image manipulation tasks, especially converting RAW files to JPEG.

Power Usage

• Idle:  90W
• Video Compression:  150W
• Gaming:  205W

These numbers are roughly in line with my previous PC, although the idle is actually lower. This is a fantastic result for a significantly more powerful machine. 

Noise and Heat

My last PC was a particularly quiet machine thanks to its case's usage of large, low RPM fans and noise reduction foam. Hard drive isolation was the only area where faltered. This time around I decided to go with a different case. In some of their cases Antec uses robust silicone cylinders to isolate the hard drive  from the case. These worked so fantastically on my Home Theater PC Build, that I decided to get a case that featured them this time as well. This combined with some low RPM fans makes this case about as quiet as my last build, minus the hard drive noise. I even purchased some Silverstone noise reduction foam as well as silicone fan mounts to cut down the noise and vibration even further. 

The Core i7-2600 is a 95W processor which isn't much heat for the Xigmatek cooler I chose to dissipate. In fact its fan never spins above its minimum RPM.

I followed the Instructable pretty closely, with the following exceptions:

LEDS:  I got my LEDs from Evil Mad Science, which sells packs of superbright 5mm LEDs in various colors. This project requires a pack of 100 white LEDs. For current limiting resistors I used 470 Ohm instead of 1K Ohm. This allowed me more flexibility since I can dim the LEDs as much as I want, but I can never make them brighter. The LEDs I used are very efficient and only draw 4.8mA with a 470 Ohm resistor, so the maximum power draw for the clock will be about 150mA. Consequently power usage is not an issue since I used a repurposed cell phone charger as the power supply and it can provide 700mA at 5V. 

Letter Mask:  I had to use 4 transparencies stacked in order to get the mask dark enough. I also used a wider border for the letter mask to cover up some imperfections around the edges of my transparencies. For LED diffusion I used some translucent plastic folders that I found at an office supply store. I got a multicolor pack so that I could try different configurations and decided that a combination of one gray and one white folder cut to fit in the frame was the best looking and most functional choice.

LED Holder:  Instead of a cardboard LED holder I used foam poster board. This is a much stiffer material and makes the holder much sturdier, however, it is also thicker so I had to make the light baffles 1" high rather than 1-1/8".

Circuit Board:  Since the wiring on this project is fairly complex I decided early on that I wanted to keep the circuit board as simple as possible. In order to accomplish this I used two Radioshack breadboard matching printed circuit boards. These are great boards since they have power buses running down the sides of each board and they have plenty of room for the 7 chips necessary for this project. This made it very straightforward to scratchbuild an Arduino on one of the boards and then wire it to the other chips. Note: when building an Arduino in this way you need an FTDI cable which plugs into the 6-Pin header on the board in order to program the Arduino.

I mounted the boards side-by-side on a piece of acrylic to make it easier to work with. I also wired the board such that I could add a photoresistor in the future to allow for dynamic LED dimming (its wiring is bundled separately for later use as shown in the photos). Instead of wiring headers I just wired directly from the circuit board to the LEDs using multicolor wire to differentiate which word group I was wiring to (you can see each ULN2003A's bundle grouped together in the photos). 

The size of these boards prevented me from trying to mount them inside the picture frame, however, mounting the boards on the back wasn't a problem. As shown in the photos I had use some stacked foam board as spacers between the back of the picture frame and the wall to keep the board from rubbing agains the wall. I also changed the power socket mounting from the back of the frame to the bottom by cutting a notch in the wood and gluing it in place.

Conclusion:  The biggest problem I had with this project was dealing with a slightly imprecise LED layout. This resulted in some of light baffles partially blocking the wrong letters. After removing the problem baffles, however, I found that my diffusion layers worked well at making up for any discrepancies due to LED placement as well as reducing cross-letter light bleed to an acceptable level. As far as the code goes the only changes I made were done to make use of external pull-down resistors instead of internal and to clean up the code a little bit since some of the comments no longer made sense. I really like this project. It is not only cool looking, but it is useful as well. 

• Download Word Clock Arduino Code

This project uses a BASIC Stamp, however, which I have no interest in using. So when I found the following post at Gumbo Labs about using the Parallax reader with an Arduino, I was excited. Well I finally got around to trying out their code and it works perfectly. All you have to do is wire up the Parallax reader's power, ground, enable, and serial lines, upload the code and start reading tags. 

• Original Post:  Parallax RFID Reader <--> Arduino
• Download RFID Reader Arduino Code

Here are some pictures of my test setup. As you can see the reader's LED changes from red to green when it is reading a tag.

The build itself took around 2 hours to assemble the control circuitry and another 4.5 hours to solder all of the LEDs. It's a bit of an undertaking, but when you're done it's a great feeling when all 625 LEDs light up. To program the Peggy you use the Arduino IDE and download the Peggy Library. I haven't experimented too much with it yet, but I did try out some of the demo programs from the library and you can see what the Peggy can do in the video below. I look forward to playing with this project a lot in the future.

The software setup for my new HTPC started with a clean install of Ubuntu 9.10. This went without a hitch and it was time to install the various software packages that I use to get my system in working order.

Network Sharing

• Samba (located in the System -> Administration menu after installation)

In the Ubuntu repository this is called the system-config-samba package. This is a great GUI tool for setting up shares on a Windows network and allows me to view all the content on my HTPC on my Windows machines. Just input your Workgroup, what you want to share and who is allowed to view it. This tool makes this process much easier than editing configuration files. One thing that confused me at first was setting up user access; make sure to include the computer name of the user in the "Windows Username" field. For example "joe" didn't work, but "DESKTOP\joe" did.

Backup

• Scheduled Tasks (located in the System Tools menu after installation)

Called gnome-schedule in the repository this utility allows me to run a backup script at a particular time. This is basically a GUI frontend for CRON and therefore much easier for a Linux novice like myself. I run a RSYNC script every night at 2AM which synchronizes the hard drive containing my media archive with another hard drive. I have found this a better backup solution than having a RAID array because it doesn't rely on any controller hardware or software. If one of the drives fails I can just replace it and copy the files to the new one. If I want to put the hard drives in another machine I can just take them out and plug them in, no other configuration is necessary. I realize there are drawbacks to this system, but I prefer something that I understand and know how to fix as opposed to other solutions that I have tried that have failed and cannot be fixed (ie. the Drobo).

Media Playback

• VLC - media player
• Miro - RSS media aggregator/player
• Boxee - media center based on XBMC with great web integration

This is the standard media grabbing and playback package I have been using for a while now. I use VLC whenever I'm in keyboard and mouse mode to play video and audio files. Miro isn't perfect, but it's better than any other media aggregator I have tried. Boxee is fantastic for local playback as well as web content and it can be controlled via remote control. In the past Boxee was somewhat finicky when it came to your audio and video settings, but I have found the new Beta version to be much more stable.

Bittorrent

• Deluge - my favorite torrent client, has the right balance of features and simplicity

Remote Control

• LIRC - configured this for my Windows Media Center remote and it integrated perfectly with XBMC & Boxee

Accessories

• GNOME Do - an awesome tool much like Quicksilver on the Mac, only for the GNOME desktop
• pyRenamer - a fantastic, simple tool for renaming lots of files quickly

This setup served me well on my Studio Hybrid HTPC and is performing equally well on my new machine. I frequently try different software packages, but these core programs are always present on my home theater box.

The following were my goals for my HTPC/media server build:

• Storage Expandability - plenty of internal 3.5" slots so I can reuse my current content storage drives and add more as needed in the future
• Adequate Onboard Video - although not as powerful as nVidia's or ATI's products, Intel's integrated graphics are fine for home theater use when paired with a decent CPU, they also use less power, and their Linux compatibility is generally better
• Low Power - this system will be on 24 hours a day so it needs to be as efficient as possible
• Quiet - this will sit next to my TV so it has to be as quiet as possible

Parts

• Antec Mini P180 Case (MicroATX Mini Tower)
• Antec Earthwatts Green 380W Power Supply
• Intel BOXDB43LD Motherboard (MicroATX, X4500 graphics, DVI, 6 SATA ports, 6 channel audio)
• Intel Celeron E3300 CPU (2.5 GHz, Dual Core)
• G.Skill DDR2 800 RAM (2GB)
• LG 22x DVD Burner
• Xigmatek HDT-SD964 CPU Cooler (with XIGMATEK ACK-I7363 mounting kit)

The Antec Mini P180 has 5 internal hard drive bays, plenty of ventilation (120mm & 200mm fans) and sound reducing panels. While this case is much larger than either of my previous HTPCs, I was more than willing to sacrifice space for a better all-around system. The Intel BOXDB43LD motherboard has decent onboard graphics (an upgrade over the Studio Hybrid's X3100), plenty of SATA ports for storage expansion and a decent assortment of AV ports. The Celeron E3300 processor fits my requirements for a processor that is cheap, powerful enough, and uses relatively little electricity. In order to make this build as quiet as possible I decided to use a fanless CPU heatsink. This is possible because the thermal dissipation required by the Celeron E3300 (65W) is low, the heatsink I chose is fairly large, and it should get plenty of airflow from the two case fans even when they are run at their lowest setting.

Assembly

The build for this machine was fairly straightforward. The case has enough room to creatively route cables behind the motherboard to minimize air blockage. I mounted the DVD burner on the bottom because the top slot's depth is limited by the huge 200mm top fan. I also rotated the CPU's heatsink from its normal orientation to take advantage of the top fan's airflow.

In order to take advantage of the SPDIF connection on the motherboard I built myself a coaxial SPDIF bracket using an old PCI bracket, a female RCA jack, some single conductor shielded cable, and a 3 pin female header. All you have to do is wire the center of the RCA jack to the pin of the header that connects to the signal pin on the motherboard using the center conductor of the cable. Then connect the cable's shield to the outside of the RCA jack and the ground pin of the motherboard header.

Input Devices

I have used this control setup for a while now and it works very well for me:

• Logitech K400 Wireless Keyboard & Touchpad - I have used a lot of different combinations of mice and keyboards with my home theater setup and this one is the best. It takes up less space, has great range, and features a solid keyboard with a very responsive touchpad.
• Logitech Harmony 610 Remote (set to emulate a Windows Media Center remote) - This isn't the most advanced Harmony remote, but it also isn't ridiculously expensive

Performance

Superficially this machine performs about the same as the Studio Hybrid. I noticed slightly less CPU utilization when playing videos. This could be attributed to the improved graphics processor, although the X4500 does not support CPU offloading of video decoding for any format other than MPEG2.

Here's a performance comparison between this build (bold) and my Studio Hybrid (in parenthesis):

• Boot Time - 0:55 (1:00)
• CD Rip to FLAC time - 2:16 (3:41)
• FLAC to MP3 Compression time - 1:16 (1:31)

Based on this info it seems that the Celeron E3300 is somewhat more powerful than the Core 2 Duo T5800 in the Studio Hybrid. Some of the performance difference can be attributed to the slower hard drive in the Studio Hybrid and the CD ripping performance was definitely affected by the much faster DVD drive in the new HTPC. However, the MP3 compression test relies heavily on CPU performance alone and shows that the Celeron E3300 is a solid performer.

Power Usage

• Idle - 42W
• Play 720p Video - 51W
• Play 1080p Video - 55W
• FLAC to MP3 Compression - 64W
• Average over a week - 44.2W

Previously I determined that my Studio Hybrid used an average of 27W over the course of a week. This is 39% less than the 44.2W average used by my new HTPC, however, it doesn't take into account the two external hard drives I had attached to the Studio Hybrid that are now mounted internally. When you add in the 5W used by each of the two hard drives, it results in only a 16.3% power savings by the Studio Hybrid over my new HTPC. That's pretty good considering this new system is faster and uses desktop instead of laptop components.

Noise & Heat

I am very happy that all of my attempts to keep this machine as quiet as possible were very successful. In terms of absolute volume its probably about the same as the Studio Hybrid, however, the fans on this system are much lower pitched and therefore blend into the background noise of the room a lot more. Another advantage is that when under heavy load the fans don't spin up & generate more noise like they did on the Studio Hybrid. The default cooling is more than enough for the low level of heat generated by this system. The CPU stays around 38C and the hard drives stay under 30C at all times.

• Check out the Software portion of my HTPC.