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Radiation Fallout Meter hard drive enclosure, USB 2.0 version
I've previously built a firewire hard drive enclosure using an old CD-RW firewire case and an even older civil defense fallout meter. Came out pretty well, have it rigged so the guage lights up to show power and the needle moves to show drive activity. Pictures can be seen here.
That one is currently hosting a 30GB drive and gets daily use, but I was in need of something with broader compatibility so I bought a cheap USB 2.0 drive enclosure.
That one worked well enough, but it lacked pizazz. Since my firewire case is a good attention getter I set out to build another.
Hurdle #1, getting another radiation fallout meter. I was off to ebay, thinking I'd get another one as cheaply as I'd gotten my first. No such luck, ended up paying twice what the first one was.
Hurdle #2, when I got the fallout meter it was noticeably different from the first one. The guage is a different type, sealed metal with a plastic face as opposed to the all plastic guage on my first meter. Makes it a bit more involved when mounting the power LED.
Hurdle #3, the USB bridge board in the USB case was a bit wide to fit into the fallout meter. I actually had to trim one corner down to get it to fit.
I did some proper revisions on this one, which led to one more problem. In the first version, the hard drive was mounted upside down because of a mismeasurement and poorly placed mounting screw holes. So in this one I measured everything properly, but when I went to put the drive in I noticed there were ridges inside the case that kept the drive from dropping easily into place. A couple minutes with a grinder fixed those, although the drive is still a tight fit.
One other issue was when cutting the holes for cables and the power switch. I roughed the holes out with a Dremel, then did my best to make everything fit with files and elbow grease. Well, the power switch turned out like crap because I couldn't find my small files. It's not awful, but I'm not real happy with the results. This can be seen in one pic below.
Still have a few things left to do.
- blue LED mounted in the guage, I have a hole drilled but don't have an LED
- cooling fan will be mounted in the bottom of the case. This one is going to be running a 160GB drive which gets pretty hot. I'm waiting on a fan grill and I need to find a low profile fan since a standard size is about 1mm too tall.
- the fan also means I need to put some feet on this or the fan won't be able to get any air. Probably just going to use some small rubber feet, anything else may look strange.
Anyway, here's the first pics.
In this one you can see the crappy cut outs.
If you look close in this one you can see the rounded off corner of the bridge board.
I don't have a pic of the connections for the guage or the needle in action, want to wait til it's 100% done.
I've previously built a firewire hard drive enclosure using an old CD-RW firewire case and an even older civil defense fallout meter. Came out pretty well, have it rigged so the guage lights up to show power and the needle moves to show drive activity. Pictures can be seen here.
That one is currently hosting a 30GB drive and gets daily use, but I was in need of something with broader compatibility so I bought a cheap USB 2.0 drive enclosure.
That one worked well enough, but it lacked pizazz. Since my firewire case is a good attention getter I set out to build another.
Hurdle #1, getting another radiation fallout meter. I was off to ebay, thinking I'd get another one as cheaply as I'd gotten my first. No such luck, ended up paying twice what the first one was.
Hurdle #2, when I got the fallout meter it was noticeably different from the first one. The guage is a different type, sealed metal with a plastic face as opposed to the all plastic guage on my first meter. Makes it a bit more involved when mounting the power LED.
Hurdle #3, the USB bridge board in the USB case was a bit wide to fit into the fallout meter. I actually had to trim one corner down to get it to fit.
I did some proper revisions on this one, which led to one more problem. In the first version, the hard drive was mounted upside down because of a mismeasurement and poorly placed mounting screw holes. So in this one I measured everything properly, but when I went to put the drive in I noticed there were ridges inside the case that kept the drive from dropping easily into place. A couple minutes with a grinder fixed those, although the drive is still a tight fit.
One other issue was when cutting the holes for cables and the power switch. I roughed the holes out with a Dremel, then did my best to make everything fit with files and elbow grease. Well, the power switch turned out like crap because I couldn't find my small files. It's not awful, but I'm not real happy with the results. This can be seen in one pic below.
Still have a few things left to do.
- blue LED mounted in the guage, I have a hole drilled but don't have an LED
- cooling fan will be mounted in the bottom of the case. This one is going to be running a 160GB drive which gets pretty hot. I'm waiting on a fan grill and I need to find a low profile fan since a standard size is about 1mm too tall.
- the fan also means I need to put some feet on this or the fan won't be able to get any air. Probably just going to use some small rubber feet, anything else may look strange.
Anyway, here's the first pics.
In this one you can see the crappy cut outs.
If you look close in this one you can see the rounded off corner of the bridge board.
I don't have a pic of the connections for the guage or the needle in action, want to wait til it's 100% done.
