Personal Projects

[the_termin8r]

I want to annonuce a new PC-related mini project (I’m yet to devise a codename). It’s more to do with my setup than my actual laptop. I want to streamline and optimise my desk. My desk already has a relatively clean setup, but I know I can do better.

I currently have a phone mount that consists of some metal strips that have been gaffer taped to my headphone stand (a stand that isn’t even meant for my headphones), my thunderbolt dock just sits on top of my disc drive, my desk organiser is just the coin tray from a cash box, my pen pot is cracked up and starting to overflow and I have no desk light.

I don’t know how regularly I’ll be able to work on it given that I have a dissertation to be doing, but my plan is as follows:

• Figure out some kind of desk light solution.
• Design and 3D print a disc drive mount to integrate the thunderbolt dock and drive into one unit.
• Design and 3D print a new desk organiser and pen pot. I could just buy one, but I want to try integrating it into the thunderbolt dock as well. It should also be a lot cheaper.
• Design and 3D print a multipurpose USB dock.

I recently picked up a magnetic USB cable for my phone (demo pics with an HDD below). It makes connecting it to my laptop much faster and easier. I want to pick up another one, that way I have one dedicated just to my phone and the other can be for whatever device I need to connect quickly (like my buds for charging or an extrnal HDD for data backups). The only catch is that the only magnetic ends available are USB C, micro B and Apple Lightning. I want to design and print the dock such that it mounts on top of my thunderbolt dock and I can get rid of my botched phone mount mentioned above.

I actually figured out my desk light solution a couple of months ago and finally got around to implementing it yesterday. I used the leftover LED strips from my printer to make a stealth desk-light (I didn’t want a traditional lamp getting in the way). I stuck the strips on the bottom of my external monitors and mounted a switch to the bottom of my desk. I’m powering them with the charger from my old laptop which goes through a basic LM2596 buck converter to step down the 19.5V to 12V.

[Honey8]

@the_termin8r

Design and 3D print

I have a silly question. When u give command to 3d printer do u just put the design on paper and show it to printer? How u give commands?

And i loved the idea of desk light it looks soo good

[the_termin8r]

@Honey8

put the design on paper and show it to printer?

It’s not sentient you know .

I have to use 3D design software to make my initial design, then I need to use a slicer to convert that design into instructions that the printer will understand. I explained it earlier in this thread.

@the_termin8r

In terms of how you go from an idea to a finished product, you first have to design it in some sort of modelling software, you then have to save it as a stereolithography (.stl) file. That STL is then loaded into another piece of software called a slicer. The slicer does what it says. It slices your model into the layers that the printer needs to print. Here you can also adjust other parameters for the specific print such as print speed, nozzle and bed temperatures, etc… The slicer then outputs a G-Code (.gcode) file which is a file format that the printer will understand. Once you have your G-Code you just load it into your printer, set it going and hope you’ve calibrated your printer properly. lol

[Honey8]

Ooohh gotcha! Was just wondering lol.

[jrtrussell]

Lol. Are you responding to these posts by email?

[Honey8]

Eh …yep? Whay happened?

[jrtrussell]

Lol. It signs your name at the bottom which I find funny bec it literally shows your name and profile pic right above it.

[the_termin8r]

It tells you it’s from an email by the time stamp. lol

[jrtrussell]

Yea. I thought it was weird that she was signing her name at the bottom, then saw that and thought it might be the email response feature

[Honey8]

Oh no! I didn’t realise lol
I’ll switch off that mobile signature hehe.
We’ll ig there’s a sign in top left corner if it’s sent by email i saw it long back… I dunno if it still comes

[jrtrussell]

Lol. It’s still there

[Honey8]

It’s not in the above recent email … Check your eyesight i went to email settings and removed mobile signature…

Edit : others i edited

[jrtrussell]

Oof. I was referring to the mail image in the top left. Why were you replying by email anyway?

[Honey8]

I saw notif on my phone later that day and replied directly from there only… cause i myself ain’t sure when i go forums to check notifs there… so by email it’ll be quicker…person doesn’t has to wait much lol.
Same as doing rn i was in middle of making notes just checked.

[the_termin8r]

Wasn’t planning on doing this at all, but earlier today it occurred to me that I can use my second magnetic USB cable and Banshee’s old action cam for a webcam setup (especially now since I’ve taped over my entrie laptop bezel and don’t want to undo 30mins of work).

I got a clear piece of acrylic and drilled some holes into it, zip tied the cable to the acrylic and then screwed a metal strip (the kind that comes in rolls/spools) to the top of the acrylic and then just used a lot of gaffer tape to mount it to the back of the monitor. Then it was just running the cable to my thunderbolt dock.

The magnet is strong enough to actually hold the camera even when it has a battery in it. I took the battery out as not to put strain on the connector since the setup is just a cantilever. Now I have a camera that I don’t have to worry about taping over, because I can just detach it when I don’t need it. I also have another magnetic dock that I can use for light things like the camera or charing my buds.

---

On the topic of magnetic USB cables, I found out that the ones I bought (and in fact all the ones in existence for now from what I can tell) are only limited to USB 2 speeds which is pretty terrible these days. The USB 2 speeds don’t bottleneck my phone because it too runs on USB 2, but they will bottleneck everything else like external drives.

So, I have a new plan. Instead of running magnetic USB cables, I’ll be running regular A to C cables, but with 20 pin magnetic thunderbolt extensions. They’re typically angled at 90° and are more low-profile as a result. I actually have a free USB 2 port on the thunderbolt dock so I’ll leave the current camera setup as is, but will eventually buy those thunderbolt extensions.

All of this translates into a more compact design and one extra magnetic port.

I know thunderbolt 3 is actually 24 pins, but 24 pin magnetic connectors seem to be an expensive rarity unless you buy them from shady Chinese lisings on Ebay. I actually bought one (from just such a listing) to go between my laptop and dock, but it came with two dead pins so one of my screens wasn’t being connected. I’m waiting for the replacement to come in. They haven’t asked me to send back the semi-broken one, so I might get to keep it.

A lot of this is actually in anticipation for when I eventually get an XPS 17 9700 (if Dell would hurry up and release the i9), which doesn’t have any real ports anymore (besides an SD slot). If the replacement 24 pin extension works I’ll use it on my current laptop (obviously) and then I’ll repurpose it to the 17 and use the semi-broken one for the charger on the 17 as it has a USB C charger and I’d only need the power pins.

Of course, I still can’t work on any of this because I’ve got exams and my dissertation. Hopefully I’ll be able to start in about a month.

[the_termin8r]

Spent what little free time I had over the past 2 weeks designing and printing prototypes of the bottom section of my dock upgrades. Got to print the final versions of the parts last night and this morning. Mounted them earlier today. There’s some panel gaps and I should have designed some grooves for the feet, but it’s good enough for me. Now I just need to buy a 20-pin magnetic USB-C adapter so I can start designing the top section.

Speaking of…

@the_termin8r

I know thunderbolt 3 is actually 24 pins, but 24 pin magnetic connectors seem to be an expensive rarity unless you buy them from shady Chinese lisings on Ebay. I actually bought one (from just such a listing) to go between my laptop and dock, but it came with two dead pins so one of my screens wasn’t being connected. I’m waiting for the replacement to come in. They haven’t asked me to send back the semi-broken one, so I might get to keep it.

The replacement never did come, so I got ebay involved and got my money back today. I’ve still got the one with two dead pins. Don’t know what I’ll do with it yet as it’s too bulky to use for the top section of the dock.

In retrospect, it probably isn’t the best idea to have one going between my dock and laptop as it’ll introduce losses and there’s nothing to say it can handle the 130W power delivery of the dock (Dell went 30W over the official USB-C spec). It will also leave the male part sticking out of the TB3 port, meaning that it’s free to catch on things (despite being fairly low profile) and if I happen to put it in my bag with that side down, the entire weight of the laptop will be on that one spot.

Final version of the USB hub section.

Prototype of the optical drive section. I forgot to take a photo of the final one, the only difference is that the final is 1mm taller and has screw holes at the corners to mount to the hub section.

This is what it looked like before (no extra USB ports and just sitting on the optical drive).

[rickvanmeijel]

Looks a lot smoother now. Almost reminds me of an Apple product update. You know, a new version that looks slightly more polished

[the_termin8r]

Unlike an Apple product though, this actually works and doesn’t cost 7 grand.

[rickvanmeijel]

Hahaha fair enough

[the_termin8r]

I should point out, I mean my mod, not the dock. The dock wasn’t cheap and a lot of people in professional environments had constant issues with this model when it was still in service. I’ve gotten lucky it seems. I’ve had it play up maybe twice and all I had to do was power cycle it which takes all of 10 secs.