Anthropolis
Canna Jedi in training.
Hello Friends! I've been using a little chamber made from a recycled old PC with some diy led's for my seedling and clones. It was time to repaint and rebuild it, so I knew it was time to take some pictures and make a guide! 
It's been working great, the only problems with my diy-led setup is that it was starting to look really ugly, was stained from using CS/STS in there, and most importantly the seedling were having way too much stretch!!
Really it was a test to see how it could be done, not a permanent option. This rebuild will provide a more permanent option, will eliminate unwanted over stretching, is cleverly disguised as a computer lol, and best of all it recycles an old PC keeping it out of our landfills! Win for all!
There's lots of pictures, but I've cropped and resized very heavily and it's only about 3.5 megabytes of pics. So it should be load friendly.
Here's the ugly led prototype after a year of hard abuse lol, notice my ghetto rigged heating pad for the winter:
--------
Intro:
To sum it up, we're going to recycle an old PC, remove all the components, paint the inside, hack up a few things, wire it safely for a couple CFL bulbs, and ensure it's halfway camouflaged as a computer.
Difficulty:
Easy if you're used to DIY, crafting, and electronics work. Moderately difficult if new to these tools and principles.
Stuff you'll need:
Safety Warning: Working with wall voltage is much different than working with computer or car voltage. You could really fry something or hurt yourself. Working with soldering irons and glue guns can be dangerous as they are very hot. Working with Dremel tools and drills can be dangerous too, a Dremel could take a huge chunk of finger before it even hurts lol. But think carefully and be safe and you won't get hurt.... too often lol.
Getting Started:
I'm rebuilding a previous chamber, so I'll get you caught up quickly on the missing steps. Get the PC, open it up, and remove the components.
This could take awhile and could be very very dirty and nasty inside. Recycle everything but keep the fans, keep the cd/dvd drives (semi-optional), and keep the PSU (power supply).
Now give it a decent cleaning, this may not be pleasant lol. It should be pretty much a bare case chassis at this point.
We're basically caught up to the starting point here now. When it's dry and ready from the cleaning, take it outside and lay out a place to paint. I like to lay down plastic or newspaper on a railing for stuff like this.
Tape off the edges and holes so the paint doesn't get all over the exterior.
Eww, see how this one got all stained from the CS/STS spray.
Now start spraying with the white paint! Woohoo! If you haven't done this before, note that you want to give it a few light mists, let that dry, and spray on lightly in stages. Eventually once it's built up almost all white, give it one last heavy wet coat.
While the wet coat is drying, we can work on the electronics My favorite part.
Take the PSU (power supply unit) and open it up. Should be several screws, some maybe under a sticker or two, and might put up a fight to open lol.
Now what we want is to remove the main board, the thing with all the junk on it. You'll have to unplug the fan, probably unplug the main line plug (with the blue & brown wires in this pic).
There's probably 4 or 6 screws, maybe a plastic clip, and cut the zip ties holding the wire bundle to the case. Don't forget there might be a screw on the bottom! This screw went to a plastic clip I had to hold with pliers to unscrew!
Okay, once you've wrestled the big clunky board out, give it a good blow with some compressed air, or blow it out and wipe it down inside. It's probably nasty. It doesn't have to be made spotless.
Important! If your donor PSU has this protection board or something like it, KEEP IT IN THERE!! This will add another layer of protection. It will flip the switch if something short circuits.
Keep the fan in there. It just so happen that I had previously upgraded the fan so this one is silent and very nice, but your donor PSU probably has some old chinese junk fan in there lol. That's okay.
The presence of this fan is vital! If this is your only fan, you need this fan there! It will extract the hot air from across your lights, as it is at the highest place on the case.
Ok, see the three wires left? Green/yellow is ground, that corresponds to the bottom round hole in an electrical outlet. Brown wire is HOT, this is like the +, it's not actually hot in temperature, its called hot electrically. The Blue wire is called neutral, sorta like the -. These colors inside the computer PSU should be international, but if you have whacky colors then you'll have to google and use your multimeter.
When you wire your power strip to these, you'll have to match these up with the different colors in that wire. I'll show you don't worry. To review:
BROWN = HOT
BLUE = NEUTRAL
GREEN/YELLOW STRIPE = GROUND
Keep that info nearby, but for now it's time to hack up the PSU case with the Dremel! This is sorta optional depending on how you want to mount the lights and how much space you have in the donor PC.
I went with better safe than sorry and hacked it up for more working space. Here:
We're just going to cut a line right across that back plate, right by the bend, to remove it.
Hack it off and now it will be dangerously sharp. Put on the sanding thingie and buzz around all the cut edges to smooth them out and make them safe to handle. The cutting and sanding is going to make a mess of metal dust and flake everywhere. Be careful and clean it all up. Blow out the PSU again to remove the metal dust.
Time for wiring! Strip the brown, blue, and green wires.
Now we're ready to wire up the power strip. You'll have to decide how long to cut the strip wire, based on how much room and where/how you'll probably mount the strip. 8" or about 20cm is what I chose, but it probably was too short, and limited my mounting options.
Cut, and then carefully remove a couple inches of the outer sheathing. Careful use of a razor blade / Xacto knife helps. Then you have your 3 wires, yay! Strip the tips of each, so you get something about like this:
Uh oh, wait a sec, those wire are different colors! OMG my life is overrrrr, everythings ruinnnned now!! No, just hang on lol.
BLACK = HOT
WHITE = NEUTRAL
GREEN = GROUND
These will be matched accordingly to the PSU plug wires. If your PSU wires are different, or the setup is different, or if the power strip wires are different, then you'll have to do a little research according to where you are.
Here is a perfect link with wiring color codes and meanings for various locations. http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/vol_5/chpt_2/2.html
The GREEN wires go together of course. The BROWN and BLACK wires go together, those are hot. The BLUE and the WHITE wires go together, those are neutral.
So, you want to intertwine the respective wires a little bit, add a few points of solder with the soldering iron for added security, and twist on some electrical caps. If you don't have or want to use twist caps, you can use insulated butt connectors of appropriate size. Don't use just electrical tape, it's just not secure enough to use alone with wall voltage of 120 volts.
First Testing:
With the power strip wired up, it's time to test it before going any further, in case something is wrong. Make sure BOTH switches on the back of the PSU and the power strip are OFF. Plug in the black cord between the wall and the back of the PSU. Alright here goes! Switch on the PSU and hopefully no sparks and smoke billows up. Put in a light bulb into the power strip and turn on the power strip. Hopefully nothing went wrong and the light bulb lit up.
Problems?:
If it didn't light up, do a quick check of everything you did so far and make sure it's secure, tight, whatever. Hopefully you have an AC/DC Multimeter at this point. Set it to the 250V AC setting. Start by just shoving the leads into an outlet on the strip. It should read the voltage of your country, about 120 V in the US. If it doesn't, go backwards from there. Test the wires you put together, then test the back of the switch, then test the main cable to the wall. The problem is in there somewhere, or one of the switches is off, or the bulb or bulb socket is bad lol.
When it's working, let's go forward. Turn it all off again. For extra protection, place strips of electrical tape over any exposed parts of the PSU switch, and one quick wrap around the bases of the wire twists. Like this:
Fans:
The fans need power captain! PC fans function anywhere from about 3~4 volts up to the full speed of 12 volts. The fans will run silently and still move good enough air with 5v of power. Guess what outputs 5~5.1 volts? USB, that's right! You probably have a few extra USB chargers by now, just from devices and whatever. Get one with or without the wire attached, doesn't matter.
I'm using one with the separate USB cable. So, take a USB cable, cut it to a comfortable length, say maybe 18" or 45 cm or whatever you think you need, just be sure to have some extra. Carefully strip a couple inches of sheathing, exposing the wires. You want the RED and the BLACK wires, but sometimes the black wire is YELLOW instead. Just know that you don't want the green or white wires and you can cut them down.
Now do something called "tinning" the wires, which is to paint on a little bit of solder so the wires stay together instead of untwisting and fraying everywhere.
If you use a front fan, and I highly suggest it, take a moment and place the fan to get an idea how you'll run that wire.
Remember it's going all the way to the back top, so you might even have to add in a length of wire for this fan.
Put the plug together and see about where it could line up.
Now strip the fan wires, tin those too, and wire them all up together with the charger wire. Definitely put a few spots of solder on these wire connections because the thin wires like this like to get floppy and run away.
RED to RED wires, and BLACK to YELLOW or BLACK wires. Now you need to protect these. You can use some electrical tape for these IF you used good amounts of solder. I decided to use wire twists and solder for these too, for maximum protection.
To keep them from pulling each other apart, some twist ties or zip ties are perfect.
Second Testing:
With everything all wired up, give it a second test and be sure everything lights and spins.
Yayyyy it works and the fans spin!! Let's finally put it together!
Final Assembly:
Now you get to put it together and try out some mounting options. The PSU only goes in one place usually only in one way, so install that first, screw it in. Here was my first attempt, and it looks okay, not great but it would work. Unfortunately the bulbs stuck out just enough that the side panel wouldn't close.
After some fighting and wrestling, I removed the DVD player again and shoved part of it up there. It's a really tight fit, but it works together nicely!
I could have had many more options if I just used the 13 Watt bulbs, but I was determined to use the bigger and much brighter 26 Watt bulbs. So yeah, the side panel takes some pushing each time to close, but it all fits! You're results will be varied based on your bulbs and case room.
Finishing Touches:
Ok so it's pretty much completed, but we need to go through and clean it up a good bit. We want it to kinda look like a computer right?
Well the DVD player got removed, but we can still make it look like there's one installed! Remove the DVD player main bezel, it's held in with clips you can push in from the outside around the encasing. Remove the DVD tray bezel too, this clips down onto the tray and unclips and come up and off the tray.
CAREFULLY, super glue the tray bezel onto the main bezel, being sure not to get obvious super glue on the outside/front. Now the PC front panel might be off now, if not, it unclips with a few clips and pulls off. Then, use standard glue or much better a hot glue gun to glue the bezels to the interior of the front panel.
While that's drying, we gotta make some attempt to make the front of the case somewhat lightproof. So just tape up everywhere you find a spaces or holes, being cautious to leave the fan open. Also, be sure to leave the places where the panel clips into open, or use the Xacto knife to cut those spaces in your tape.
Before reattaching the front panel, be sure to cover any big spaces with tape, but make sure whatever the fan vent setup is remains mostly open for air. Hey look, it looks like a computer in the front now!
Don't forget to clean up and lightproof the back as much as possible also! If you're feeling really sporty, cut some paperboard to help cover and clean up the rear port area.
Place it with some hot glue and tape up everything back there except the top fan of course!
Where the rear fan was is now totally taped up,
but you don't want it to be gathering dirt and dust as time goes by, so cover it with something halfway solid. I found some plain flat white plastic, cut a square, and hot glued it on, see in the last picture.
Lastly, be sure any wires are tucked or out of the way of fans and especially light bulbs.
Finished! Inspect and place plants for testing.
The new baby Skywalker Kush looks so pretty and happy in there!!
The Skywalker Kush and 3 little hopeful sprouts are nice and cozy in there! The CFL's keep them warm enough and don't require heating, but with the power strip inside now, I'll be adding a proper thin seedling heating mat.
Whew, this wasn't supposed to be so long lol. Enjoy if you make one! Peace and Love.
It's been working great, the only problems with my diy-led setup is that it was starting to look really ugly, was stained from using CS/STS in there, and most importantly the seedling were having way too much stretch!!
Really it was a test to see how it could be done, not a permanent option. This rebuild will provide a more permanent option, will eliminate unwanted over stretching, is cleverly disguised as a computer lol, and best of all it recycles an old PC keeping it out of our landfills! Win for all!
There's lots of pictures, but I've cropped and resized very heavily and it's only about 3.5 megabytes of pics. So it should be load friendly.
Here's the ugly led prototype after a year of hard abuse lol, notice my ghetto rigged heating pad for the winter:
--------
Intro:
To sum it up, we're going to recycle an old PC, remove all the components, paint the inside, hack up a few things, wire it safely for a couple CFL bulbs, and ensure it's halfway camouflaged as a computer.
Difficulty:
Easy if you're used to DIY, crafting, and electronics work. Moderately difficult if new to these tools and principles.
Stuff you'll need:
- An old PC. You'll find these anywhere for free. Found this one at the county trash/recycling center. Please recycle the unused innards into the proper "electronics" recycling bin.
- Power strip. Be sure to get one WITHOUT the illuminated switch, just in case you decide to try running a full term photoperiod in here, the tiny light in the switch can possibly make a hermie.
- White spray paint. Use a nice brand like Rustoleum if you're buying, not the $1 can like I did the second time lol, but I just used what I had laying around.
- Wire twistie caps or insulated butt connectors. To mate the wires.
- PC fans. At least 1x, preferably 2x. This can be harvested from the donor PC, it usually has 1 main fan and 1 power supply fan. Just use these.
- USB charger and maybe the USB cable. To provide the 5v DC power to the fans.
- Stuff you'll probably have laying around:
- Various tapes: masking and electrical.
- Various cutting devices: basic knife, scissors, razor knife (xacto knife).
- Glues: super glue, school glue, hot glue and glue gun.
- Maybe a couple zipties and/or twist ties.
- Tools you'll need to follow exactly:
- Multimeter (AC/DC). I'd say this is mandatory for dozens of reasons.
- Soldering Iron and solder, I would say it's mandatory, but you can sacrifice a little safety and do without.
- High-Speed Rotary tool (aka Dremel tool) with a couple cutting disks and a sanding thingie lol.
- Screwdrivers, pliers, ruler maybe.
Safety Warning: Working with wall voltage is much different than working with computer or car voltage. You could really fry something or hurt yourself. Working with soldering irons and glue guns can be dangerous as they are very hot. Working with Dremel tools and drills can be dangerous too, a Dremel could take a huge chunk of finger before it even hurts lol. But think carefully and be safe and you won't get hurt.... too often lol.
Getting Started:
I'm rebuilding a previous chamber, so I'll get you caught up quickly on the missing steps. Get the PC, open it up, and remove the components.
This could take awhile and could be very very dirty and nasty inside. Recycle everything but keep the fans, keep the cd/dvd drives (semi-optional), and keep the PSU (power supply).
Now give it a decent cleaning, this may not be pleasant lol. It should be pretty much a bare case chassis at this point.
We're basically caught up to the starting point here now. When it's dry and ready from the cleaning, take it outside and lay out a place to paint. I like to lay down plastic or newspaper on a railing for stuff like this.
Tape off the edges and holes so the paint doesn't get all over the exterior.
Eww, see how this one got all stained from the CS/STS spray.
Now start spraying with the white paint! Woohoo! If you haven't done this before, note that you want to give it a few light mists, let that dry, and spray on lightly in stages. Eventually once it's built up almost all white, give it one last heavy wet coat.
While the wet coat is drying, we can work on the electronics
My favorite part.Take the PSU (power supply unit) and open it up. Should be several screws, some maybe under a sticker or two, and might put up a fight to open lol.
Now what we want is to remove the main board, the thing with all the junk on it. You'll have to unplug the fan, probably unplug the main line plug (with the blue & brown wires in this pic).
There's probably 4 or 6 screws, maybe a plastic clip, and cut the zip ties holding the wire bundle to the case. Don't forget there might be a screw on the bottom! This screw went to a plastic clip I had to hold with pliers to unscrew!
Okay, once you've wrestled the big clunky board out, give it a good blow with some compressed air, or blow it out and wipe it down inside. It's probably nasty. It doesn't have to be made spotless.
Important! If your donor PSU has this protection board or something like it, KEEP IT IN THERE!! This will add another layer of protection. It will flip the switch if something short circuits.
Keep the fan in there. It just so happen that I had previously upgraded the fan so this one is silent and very nice, but your donor PSU probably has some old chinese junk fan in there lol. That's okay.
The presence of this fan is vital! If this is your only fan, you need this fan there! It will extract the hot air from across your lights, as it is at the highest place on the case.
Ok, see the three wires left? Green/yellow is ground, that corresponds to the bottom round hole in an electrical outlet. Brown wire is HOT, this is like the +, it's not actually hot in temperature, its called hot electrically. The Blue wire is called neutral, sorta like the -. These colors inside the computer PSU should be international, but if you have whacky colors then you'll have to google and use your multimeter.
When you wire your power strip to these, you'll have to match these up with the different colors in that wire. I'll show you don't worry. To review:
BROWN = HOT
BLUE = NEUTRAL
GREEN/YELLOW STRIPE = GROUND
Keep that info nearby, but for now it's time to hack up the PSU case with the Dremel! This is sorta optional depending on how you want to mount the lights and how much space you have in the donor PC.
I went with better safe than sorry and hacked it up for more working space. Here:
We're just going to cut a line right across that back plate, right by the bend, to remove it.
Hack it off and now it will be dangerously sharp. Put on the sanding thingie and buzz around all the cut edges to smooth them out and make them safe to handle. The cutting and sanding is going to make a mess of metal dust and flake everywhere. Be careful and clean it all up. Blow out the PSU again to remove the metal dust.
Time for wiring! Strip the brown, blue, and green wires.
Now we're ready to wire up the power strip. You'll have to decide how long to cut the strip wire, based on how much room and where/how you'll probably mount the strip. 8" or about 20cm is what I chose, but it probably was too short, and limited my mounting options.
Cut, and then carefully remove a couple inches of the outer sheathing. Careful use of a razor blade / Xacto knife helps. Then you have your 3 wires, yay!
Strip the tips of each, so you get something about like this:
Uh oh, wait a sec, those wire are different colors! OMG my life is overrrrr, everythings ruinnnned now!! No, just hang on lol.
BLACK = HOT
WHITE = NEUTRAL
GREEN = GROUND
These will be matched accordingly to the PSU plug wires. If your PSU wires are different, or the setup is different, or if the power strip wires are different, then you'll have to do a little research according to where you are.
Here is a perfect link with wiring color codes and meanings for various locations. http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/vol_5/chpt_2/2.html
The GREEN wires go together of course. The BROWN and BLACK wires go together, those are hot. The BLUE and the WHITE wires go together, those are neutral.
So, you want to intertwine the respective wires a little bit, add a few points of solder with the soldering iron for added security, and twist on some electrical caps. If you don't have or want to use twist caps, you can use insulated butt connectors of appropriate size. Don't use just electrical tape, it's just not secure enough to use alone with wall voltage of 120 volts.
First Testing:
With the power strip wired up, it's time to test it before going any further, in case something is wrong. Make sure BOTH switches on the back of the PSU and the power strip are OFF. Plug in the black cord between the wall and the back of the PSU. Alright here goes! Switch on the PSU and hopefully no sparks and smoke billows up. Put in a light bulb into the power strip and turn on the power strip. Hopefully nothing went wrong and the light bulb lit up.
Problems?:
If it didn't light up, do a quick check of everything you did so far and make sure it's secure, tight, whatever. Hopefully you have an AC/DC Multimeter at this point. Set it to the 250V AC setting. Start by just shoving the leads into an outlet on the strip. It should read the voltage of your country, about 120 V in the US. If it doesn't, go backwards from there. Test the wires you put together, then test the back of the switch, then test the main cable to the wall. The problem is in there somewhere, or one of the switches is off, or the bulb or bulb socket is bad lol.
When it's working, let's go forward. Turn it all off again. For extra protection, place strips of electrical tape over any exposed parts of the PSU switch, and one quick wrap around the bases of the wire twists. Like this:
Fans:
The fans need power captain! PC fans function anywhere from about 3~4 volts up to the full speed of 12 volts. The fans will run silently and still move good enough air with 5v of power. Guess what outputs 5~5.1 volts? USB, that's right! You probably have a few extra USB chargers by now, just from devices and whatever. Get one with or without the wire attached, doesn't matter.
I'm using one with the separate USB cable. So, take a USB cable, cut it to a comfortable length, say maybe 18" or 45 cm or whatever you think you need, just be sure to have some extra. Carefully strip a couple inches of sheathing, exposing the wires. You want the RED and the BLACK wires, but sometimes the black wire is YELLOW instead. Just know that you don't want the green or white wires and you can cut them down.
Now do something called "tinning" the wires, which is to paint on a little bit of solder so the wires stay together instead of untwisting and fraying everywhere.
If you use a front fan, and I highly suggest it, take a moment and place the fan to get an idea how you'll run that wire.
Remember it's going all the way to the back top, so you might even have to add in a length of wire for this fan.
Put the plug together and see about where it could line up.
Now strip the fan wires, tin those too, and wire them all up together with the charger wire. Definitely put a few spots of solder on these wire connections because the thin wires like this like to get floppy and run away.
RED to RED wires, and BLACK to YELLOW or BLACK wires. Now you need to protect these. You can use some electrical tape for these IF you used good amounts of solder. I decided to use wire twists and solder for these too, for maximum protection.
To keep them from pulling each other apart, some twist ties or zip ties are perfect.
Second Testing:
With everything all wired up, give it a second test and be sure everything lights and spins.
Yayyyy it works and the fans spin!! Let's finally put it together!
Final Assembly:
Now you get to put it together and try out some mounting options. The PSU only goes in one place usually only in one way, so install that first, screw it in. Here was my first attempt, and it looks okay, not great but it would work. Unfortunately the bulbs stuck out just enough that the side panel wouldn't close.
After some fighting and wrestling, I removed the DVD player again and shoved part of it up there. It's a really tight fit, but it works together nicely!
I could have had many more options if I just used the 13 Watt bulbs, but I was determined to use the bigger and much brighter 26 Watt bulbs. So yeah, the side panel takes some pushing each time to close, but it all fits! You're results will be varied based on your bulbs and case room.
Finishing Touches:
Ok so it's pretty much completed, but we need to go through and clean it up a good bit. We want it to kinda look like a computer right?
Well the DVD player got removed, but we can still make it look like there's one installed! Remove the DVD player main bezel, it's held in with clips you can push in from the outside around the encasing. Remove the DVD tray bezel too, this clips down onto the tray and unclips and come up and off the tray.
CAREFULLY, super glue the tray bezel onto the main bezel, being sure not to get obvious super glue on the outside/front. Now the PC front panel might be off now, if not, it unclips with a few clips and pulls off. Then, use standard glue or much better a hot glue gun to glue the bezels to the interior of the front panel.
While that's drying, we gotta make some attempt to make the front of the case somewhat lightproof. So just tape up everywhere you find a spaces or holes, being cautious to leave the fan open. Also, be sure to leave the places where the panel clips into open, or use the Xacto knife to cut those spaces in your tape.
Before reattaching the front panel, be sure to cover any big spaces with tape, but make sure whatever the fan vent setup is remains mostly open for air. Hey look, it looks like a computer in the front now!
Don't forget to clean up and lightproof the back as much as possible also! If you're feeling really sporty, cut some paperboard to help cover and clean up the rear port area.
Place it with some hot glue and tape up everything back there except the top fan of course!
Where the rear fan was is now totally taped up,
but you don't want it to be gathering dirt and dust as time goes by, so cover it with something halfway solid. I found some plain flat white plastic, cut a square, and hot glued it on, see in the last picture.
Lastly, be sure any wires are tucked or out of the way of fans and especially light bulbs.
Finished! Inspect and place plants for testing.
The new baby Skywalker Kush looks so pretty and happy in there!!
The Skywalker Kush and 3 little hopeful sprouts are nice and cozy in there! The CFL's keep them warm enough and don't require heating, but with the power strip inside now, I'll be adding a proper thin seedling heating mat.
Whew, this wasn't supposed to be so long lol. Enjoy if you make one! Peace and Love.
!!!!!!
