The Man Cave

The Wall-PC no longer lives in my office, as I have found it better suited for other tasks in our new house. I run a network of software Squeezeboxes (home music servers) in my house and the Wall-PC made a perfect wifi Squeezeplayer in our new finished basement. The Wall-PC displays the current album art, title, etc. that’s playing via Pandora or my MP3 library while also having the ability to control the playback and volume in the basement and throughout the house. The Wall-PC is also frequently used to display live sports scores and Fantasy Football scoreboards during a game of 9 ball or cut-throat.

Wall-PC

I cut out a small square hole out of the drywall and ran the power  and composite audio cables up the wall and across the ceiling to my audio receiver’s inputs. I had to use a wire hanger and a bit of patience to run the cables due to the fiberglass insulation behind the drywall. The power brick is now hidden flush inside the back of the frame. This was possible due to the extremely thin Sony Vaio AC adapter. The Wall-PC is controlled via a ATI Remote Wonder RF remote and a Logitech MX Revolution wireless mouse.

Although it can be a bit buggy at times, I highly recommend the Logitech Squeezebox software and hardware. It is compatible with almost every online music provider as well as your own libraries and allows you to sync your music throughout your entire house. It is also actively updated and continually supported, in fact there was just a major update that overhauled the whole UI on the software player, server and remote which made it even better! I will post additional details on my home wifi music setup in future posts.

Rover can keep his tag forever

The solution is to use an address that will never change, a domain name address (URL). The first step is to register an appropriate domain name, in my case I chose amstelthedog.com. A domain name costs roughly $7 a year, about the same price or cheaper than a dog tag. Once you have the domain name picked out you will need a web hosting service. There are many free hosting services available, here is an article on Lifehacker.com featuring the best free hosting providers out there. Another option would be to create a free Blogger, WordPress page, or even engrave the URL  of your Twitter or Facebook page. Note: You could also create a short & catchy domain name and have it redirect to anywhere you wanted through the domain settings.

Now once you have a domain name and hosting provider, you will need to put some details on a simple web page. Maybe your email address, or your home address and phone number if you don’t mind having that information out on the internet. Information about your dog and details about what to do and how to contact you if the pet is lost would also be helpful.

Create Contact Form w/ Google Docs

If you want to get fancy and you have some HTML skills you can create a simple web Contact Form, where they could enter their name, phone number, & message and click submit. That way you would not have to display your email address and other personal information to the public. You can also have the form send to multiple email accounts. An easy way to create a contact form is to use a free Google Apps account. Using Google Docs you can quickly create a simple contact form with email notification. There’s almost no HTML or web design knowledge required. Here is a nice tutorial video on YouTube on how to do this.

AmstelTheDog.com

Some things to consider:

• What if the person finding the lost dog doesn’t have access to the internet, or understand what the address means? The internet and domain names are so mainstream now that it is unlikely someone won’t know what to do with it or be able to ask someone that will understand it. I guess it will depend on your neighborhood or geographic location, if you feel comfortable with it or not.
• Why not just engrave your email address? E-mail addresses are more likely to change. You can’t control where the submissions are coming from or how they are formatted, so they are more likely to get marked as spam. Also, in most cases it will be harder to fit your email address on the tag, than it would be to fit a domain name.
• What if an important email from my neighbor gets caught in my spam filter? Format the incoming submissions so they don’t look like spam and use a trusted “from” address in your form. You could also have the form submit to multiple email addresses. You, your spouse, a work email, etc.
• What if I can’t fit the domain name or important information on the tag? Pick a small domain name and leave out the “www.” if you are comfortable with doing that. I fit everything I needed on a very small tag for my new puppy.
• Won’t my email address and form get hit by spammers? If you do not spread your URL around,  promote it at all, or submit it to search engines then the chances of it getting hit hard by spammers will be relatively low.
• What if I don’t immediately have access to check my email? You could set it up so that emails from your lost pet form go straight to your cell phone via SMS, using an SMS gateway or other service.

Use a Google Voice number that never changes

One final option is to use Google Voice / GrandCentral. Last week Google launched a limited release of their new Google Voice app. This allows you to have one phone number assigned by Google that you can keep with you your whole life. You can then manage your home, cell, work numbers from the account and set up appropriate forwarding. If you are lucky enough to have an account, you could use that number on your pets tag!

So there you have it, a lot of  good options to go ‘high tech’ with your pet.

The Wall-PC hanging in my office

I had an old Sony Vaio laptop lying around collecting dust and my choice was either to sell it on Ebay or think of something creative to do with it. I chose the creative route because that’s certainly more enjoyable than putting together an Ebay listing, for me at least.

The idea was to dismantle the laptop and put the guts of it into a new enclosure. I wanted the laptop to act like a flat panel and cleanly hang on the wall. I decided a shadow box frame would be a perfect solution. The challenge was finding an appropriate frame with the correct dimensions, both width/length and most importantly depth. I spent a couple months browsing shadow box frames here and there. At craft stores, online, frame shops, etc. I was not finding anything the correct size, shape, and color. Finally, I stumbled on a suitable frame at Marshalls Home Goods store. It had an ugly sea-shell display inside of it but I figured I could just tear it out and apply a new matte myself.

Side view, off the wall

Why hang a computer from the wall….?

• Takes up almost zero space
• It’s cheap, only need an old unused laptop + cheap frame
• Digital picture frame w/ online syncing
• Dedicated video game emulation with wireless controller (NES, SNES, Genesis, Playstation)
• Control music, watch movies, watch TV
• Browser testing w/o a separate tower + monitor, or KVM switch
• Security web cam or video conferencing
• File server, backup, etc.
• Extend your main PC desktop to this extra display
• Looks cool, good conversation piece

I learned fashioning your own matte for the frame is challenging for a novice and it is nearly impossible to find a pre-made matte to fit the non-standard (in the printing realm) dimensions of a laptop LCD screen. I got lucky and found a matte made specifically for certificates at Michaels, that fit it nearly perfectly. I had previously attempted to measure and cut my own with sloppy results, I would recommend getting it cut at a frame shop.

The laptop before it was torn apart

The guts of the Wall-PC:

• Sony Vaio Z1 laptop – 13″ screen, very thin and light laptop
• Pentium M 1.6ghz, 1GB RAM, 60GB HDD
• Windows XP, 1400 x 900 screen resolution
• Built in Bluetooth & Wireless B
• Xbox 360 PC wireless adapter
• USB hub, Staples snake style 5 port
• ATI Remote Wonder Plus adapter
• Pinnacle PCTV USB TV tuner
• Linksys PCMCIA Wireless N adapter
• Extra USB fan (later removed, started making noise)

Dismantling the laptop was relatively easy. It’s just a matter of finding the many tiny screws and taking away each piece in the correct order. With a little patience and a careful hand, it’s hard to screw this part up. I took away all pieces I didn’t need and removed the frame and backing of the screen. Be careful with the screen dissection because laptops often have the wireless antennas placed inside the top lid on either side of the LCD screen. I made sure to preserve those antennas and wire connections. After this, I was left with the bottom of the laptop with no keyboard and the naked LCD screen.

The guts behind the frame

How do you control it?

• Remote (logmein, remote desktop, VNC)
• AirMouse iPhone app (full emulated keyboard, trackpad, mouse buttons)
• Wireless keyboard/mouse
• Xbox 360 controller
• ATI Remote wonder RF remote
• Touch panel (maybe in the future… there are kits on eBay)

This is not a step by step tutorial, as every project and laptop/frame will vary somewhat… but basically I took the screen flipped it around and put it behind the laptop while making sure it wasn’t upside down. Everything seemed to fit, so the next step was to attach the screen to the matte and attach and fit everything inside the frame, so it hangs flush on the wall. I chose to use double-sided tape for most of the securing, which doesn’t look too pretty but it worked out fine.

Once everything was together, time to plug in, hang on drywall screw and enjoy my new Wall-PC!

View details about my home office and Wall-PC on Flickr.

Additional photos:

Tekken 3 (PS1) on Wall-PC

My desk

LCD attached to back of matte

Top view

DLO Homedock

Here is a list of the items I thought I would need for the install:

• iPod video 30GB ($200)
• Composite A/V Cables (~$10)
• Infrared remote repeater/extender (~$40)
• AC/DC power inverter and wiring (~$30)
• 8″ x 10″ plexiglass (~$8)
• Black non-slip cabinet liner (~$10)
• Brackets, screws, double sided tape, A/V couplers (~$10)
• Tools

My windshield mounted display

I decided to install the dock in the center armrest console where it would be easily accessible for the driver and passenger while remaining hidden. First, to power the dock I used a 200 watt power inverter, cut the cigarette adapter off the end of the cord and wired & grounded the inverter straight to the fuse box. The sunroof is only powered when the car is actually running, so I chose to wire the inverter to that fuse.

For the controls I used the included remote. Since the dock would be in the armrest where it would be unable to receive the remote signal I had to use an Infrared remote extender kit. The IR extender was also designed for home use and AC powered, so I plugged both the receiver and transmitter units into the inverter as well.

I attached the dock underneath plexiglass with a hole cut out for the dock connector. I cut out the bottom side of the plastic container in the armrest because there were slots for CD’s. The plexiglass was used as a new bottom for the container. I used cabinet liner from Lowe’s to cover the top of the plexiglass and stuck the DLO sticker included with the dock onto the liner.

The connections to my current car audio/video setup were quite simple. My LCD had a composite video input and my in-dash receiver had 2 composite audio inputs. I had to tear up a lot of the car for the wiring, but it is an American car and most everything snaps easily in and out of place to run and hide the wires.

Dock installed in armrest

After using the setup for some time there are some issues I have encountered. The DLO homedock has a nice interface very similar to the iPod UI. It is great to use a large screen to navigate through your iPod collection and see the album art. However, the remote control is buggy and almost unusable at times. Sometimes it is unresponsive and takes many key presses before it moves, sometimes it does something completely different or even moves backwards through the menus. But, I would have to imagine that DLO has since fixed these issues in their latest homedocks. Also, when you start your car it will not automatically begin playing, but you only need to press Play and it will pick right up where you left off. Finally, the album art is small and is too slow and buggy to load while playing music. However, I have not yet found a better way to watch iPod movies and music videos on the road, than using this type of setup. It will also work with the iPhone, but will playback music only (no video) and will not charge the phone while it’s plugged in.

All things considered, it turned out to be a clean and successful install that I’m proud of.