Portal 2 Weighted Companion Cube Subwoofer

[Cube]

Hello all I am new here but would like to share my project with the community. It has been a while in the process but I'd say Im about 75% complete. Originally this all started as a custom coffee table with an oval glass top shaped (and probably coloured) in a portal, but I had seen one guy (modsnends off the top of my head) build a sub box cube with el wire lighting and the coffee table idea was out the window and sub box here we come. Well that was about 2-3 months ago. The box started out as a portal 1 cube with the big chamfer on the edges but it has already been done so I opted for a portal 2 cube (crappy decision 1/2 way through). They say the weighted companion cube will never threaten to stab you but I stabbed it (pics will help that lol). Anyhow it's probably easier just to show the pics and progress with some captions. Any suggestion are welcome

 

[MightyMission]

Excellent soldering work.
I love the concept of this and it looks great,you should be happy with your achievement

 

[Kreij]

Well done. Very nice.

 

[AltecV1]

 

[Cube]

Ok well no captions there but here is a guide going from left to right top to bottom.
1. The start of just adding all the pieces to the box, sorry no pics of the pieces individually but there was lots (24 small detail and 48 large)
2. All pieces added with the door/lid on the top.
3. The sub face cut in and some packers being glued for the sub screws and the door with custom hinges on a ball bearing pivot slide
4. The change of heart to a portal 2 companion cube, chopped out the chamfers and added the timber to form the right shape
5. Bit of a test run with some colour (wasn't a bad guess for using an iPhone and colour cards) and the door with its mounting bolts
6. The perspex arrived so I placed some of the pieces to get a bit of an idea for the final product. You can see I removed the small detail pieces since the perspex and lighting needed to be located underneath it
7. 4 of the led strips and perspex in place with detail pieces in position
8. same as above but showing the routing for wiring and channel for the ring lighting (luckily that is the bottom of the cube where the port is going so I could afford to be a bit aggressive
9. The led strips for the small bars (24 of)
10. The prototype for the ring lighting assembly. I kicked around ideas for ages with this to make it as easy as possible and minimal effort unfortunately there is no easy way. This worked beautifully and was the thinnest design since I had a absolute maximum of 30mm to play with.
11. The prototype in action (those are 2000mcd pink leds which were way to strong but the principle is there), strangely the pic makes the light look insanely bright which it was to a degree
12. My first full ring.. not too bad for a carpenter, 504 leds and 170 resistors only 4 more to go
13. Power running to the ring via 12v battery cluster (some circuits not going )
14. Fixed the dodgie soldering and placed the ring in one side for a inspiration shot before starting the rest

I suppose I better mention the running gear also, Earthquake FF12 400w. I have basically mimicked the specs down to 2-5% tolerance (air volume and port tuning).

Back to the soldering

 

[Kreij]

About #10 above : You could have taped and etched a circular curcuit board for the LEDs, resistors and power runs.

 

[Cube]

About #10 above : You could have taped and etched a circular curcuit board for the LEDs, resistors and power runs.

is that like a pcb? sorry I'm not a electronics guru.. I have had the perspex laser cut with the holes already so I'm a bit stuck down this path without costing myself more. Thanks for the advice though

 

[Cube]

Excellent soldering work.
I love the concept of this and it looks great,you should be happy with your achievement

Thanks for the comment, my soldering has improved since the first ring. I'll take a pic of a better one when I finish it

 

[Kreij]

is that like a pcb? sorry I'm not a electronics guru.. I have had the perspex laser cut with the holes already so I'm a bit stuck down this path without costing myself more. Thanks for the advice though

Yes. We had to make them in school when I was working on my electronics degree and building hand-made, discreet component rf amplifiers for school projects.
Basicaly you got a copper covered curcuit board and put tape over the areas where you want the copper to stay (for the runs). You then etch away the exposed copper in an acid solution and you are left with a pcb. You then just have to drill small holes for the components.

Not hard really, but I have no idea what copper clad boards cost these days.
They were cheap when I was in school back when there were dinosaurs.

Wouldn't hurt to look into it for your next project, or just the fun of building pcbs on your own.

Anyway, you did great work with the way you did it. !!

 

[Cube]

Yes. We had to make them in school when I was working on my electronics degree and building hand-made, discreet component rf amplifiers for school projects.
Basicaly you got a copper covered curcuit board and put tape over the areas where you want the copper to stay (for the runs). You then etch away the exposed copper in an acid solution and you are left with a pcb. You then just have to drill small holes for the components.

Not hard really, but I have no idea what copper clad boards cost these days.
They were cheap when I was in school back when there were dinosaurs.

Wouldn't hurt to look into it for your next project, or just the fun of building pcbs on your own.

Anyway, you did great work with the way you did it. !!

that would have been a great way to do it, I'm like an electrical noobie so I researched pcb's and put a few feelers out there but no companies wanted to estimate a product for me I even sat there for a couple hours figuring out how to use eagle and kinda made a design for quotes. I will definitely keep your idea in mind for future, cheers

 

[Kreij]

You don't want a company to make the board for you, you just need the raw materials for making a curcuit board. If there is an electronic tech school near you (or you know of one you can call) ask them where you can get that kind of stuff.
If when you call you get a receptionist (which is likely) hang up, do a little research into the teachers at the school and ask for one specifically who sems like he might know that (like an RF teacher). Most tech school teachers came from the industry and are usually more than willing to help people that love the tech like they do.

 

[Cube]

You don't want a company to make the board for you, you just need the raw materials for making a curcuit board. If there is an electronic tech school near you (or you know of one you can call) ask them where you can get that kind of stuff.
If when you call you get a receptionist (which is likely) hang up, do a little research into the teachers at the school and ask for one specifically who sems like he might know that (like an RF teacher). Most tech school teachers came from the industry and are usually more than willing to help people that love the tech like they do.

aaahhh see I was barking up the wrong tree to begin with next time gadget

 

[Kreij]

Lol ... and you thought we are all just a bunch of Facebook users.
In the future, just ask, Cube. The collective knowledge of TPU members is awesome.

Oh .. don't forget to access the full compilation of TPU knowledge you have to be assimilate into the collective.
It's really pretty painless and the Borg hardware is hardly noticable.

 

[xBruce88x]

hah... borg... "Make it so number one"

awesome companion cube mode Cube.

 

[Cube]

Lol ... and you thought we are all just a bunch of Facebook users.
In the future, just ask, Cube. The collective knowledge of TPU members is awesome.

Oh .. don't forget to access the full compilation of TPU knowledge you have to be assimilate into the collective.
It's really pretty painless and the Borg hardware is hardly noticable.

Haha I didn't think that, this site has been helpful to me even before registering, plus facebook is something like this to me
I'll check out the full access thing, thanks Kreij

 

[Cube]

hah... borg... "Make it so number one"

awesome companion cube mode Cube.

mate, it's a long road but the end is near.. I hope

 

[Cube]

Can anyone suggest some ideas for led drivers. Are they easy enough to make to custom power consumption/regulation?

I worked out there is 20mA draw from 1 led strip, so 24 of those is 480mA..
and the rings draw 3400mA, x5 = 17000mA

Is that correct ..17 amp seems excessive for a bunch of leds..?

Or do I only need to supply 20mA to all the strips and 3400mA to all the rings...

Yet the if the rings draw 3.4amp, howcome a 12v battery cluster of AA's can power it fine.. ?

 

[Cube]

Ok so I have been going pretty hard out in the last couple days but the results are showing. I think I am at about 98% now, just need some detail screws and a lil something I thought of early on in the project.. so close I can almost taste the cake

 

[Black Panther]

Very beautiful work!

 

[1Kurgan1]

Very impressive, great job.

 

[Cube]

Thanks guys, I was just testing the sub.. seems to be quite sensitive which is great but since the controls are going to be shut inside the cube I'm trying to find the optimal settings for music and movies. somewhere round 100Hz cut off and about 80-90% juice (well it was a bit dark but it looked around that and sounded good).

 

[Cube]

Completion

All done now, well for the moment. Two minds about the mesh cover- maybe with better matched colours I will add it on otherwise it will have none. I originally had other ideas for the lighting like having it sound controlled or maybe computer programmed but for the moment I'm happy with all of them lighting together. Detail screws are in and a bit of ratman art in the cave. This was a triumph, I'm making a note here - huge success

I added a small clip on Youtube with 'exile vilify' in the background. Some of the pics here and some others I have taken of the build.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOyz4w9Mq0E

 

[Cube]

some help would be appreciated

so I have the cube lighting up from a 12v 20A supply - the rig draws 17.5A. I found this schematic online of a 3.5mm audio jack, couple transistor capacitors resistors etc that basically makes a sound controlled circuit. From what I can work out there are 3 circuits (durr) but there are no values for the resistors and capacitors that control the sound frequency cut-out point (like a cross over). Could anyone tell me which one would operate the bass end of the frequency?? maybe either of the three could with the right caps and resistors.....

here is the schematic-

and there is a link to see how it works via 3 leds in bottle caps and coloured water
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd3hzYAJzOo&feature=related

To go the whole hog, I guess I need this circuit or something alike to operate with a cross over dial (so I can change the cut off point of when the lights light up) and a external switch to activate it from the outside of the box but not blow up to the 20 amps of juice flowing through the system

Any help would be greatly appreciated

 

[Swamp Monster]

Circuit in the top controls the high frequency,
Circuit in the middle controls bass frequency,
Circuit in the bottom controls Middle range frequency.

For the bass, elements C2 and R11 controls frequency. Equation for bass frequency selection is in picture "Equation 1".
For high frequency, R10 and C1 are key elements. I hope I am not mistaken, please correct me if I am wrong.

*edit* - Found this online Filter calculator.
http://www.muzique.com/schem/filter.htm

About middle frequency (band-pass filter) more info here:
http://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/filter/filter_4.html

 

[Cube]

Circuit in the top controls the high frequency,
Circuit in the middle controls bass frequency,
Circuit in the bottom controls Middle range frequency.

For the bass, elements C2 and R11 controls frequency. Equation for bass frequency selection is in picture "Equation 1".
For high frequency, R10 and C1 are key elements. I hope I am not mistaken, please correct me if I am wrong.

*edit* - Found this online Filter calculator.
http://www.muzique.com/schem/filter.htm

About middle frequency (band-pass filter) more info here:
http://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/filter/filter_4.html

Thanks so much, hopefully I can integrate that middle circuit into the system. It would be a fixed frequency cut off but I will look into the adjustment side of things also.