LAN In A Box - Pt2

This is the second post about LAN in a Box, the plan to have a completely self contained unit for a 30-40 person LAN in one single container for easy carriage, storage and deployment.

The lest post finished with the cable shelf being reinforced as it was sagging down into the switch space. So here is the shelf installed. Neat.

Underneath there's plenty of room for the switch and the power strips to distribute to everything (sounds fancy, it's a pair of 4 ways). Above this there'll be a box with a patch panel from all the switch ports. Seems excessive but inevitably someone will kick or trip on a cable and it'll tug at the ports, rather than damage the cwitch, this may only damage the panel, or the cable itself. Either way, better than the shiny 4900.

About this time I was wondering how to make the bundles of cables pack into the box neatly, they've always been a bit of a pain to put away and to lay out and they inevitably become twisted and snag or don't sit flat.

After a while I decided to try and make some reels as there are only two bundles it's not going to be a huge task to start on and they will hopefully keep everything together.

Cutting a circle is a pain at times and after getting about half way round with a jigsaw I realised how stupid I was being. Behind me was a perfectly good bandsaw PERFECT for this. The system worked...

... and in about 5 minutes I'd made all four sides to the reels.

The reel centers are more 18mm plywood, with one side trimmed so as not to cut into the cables if they're tight. Screw in from each side and they're done!

They hold a full bundle perfectly and sit side by side, after a quick test roll out they seem to work pretty well, we'll see how well in November.

Once again, more to come ready for the weekends test.

LAN In A Box - Pt1

For a long while I've been doing LANs and the problem between them is storing everything neatly out of the way. Fortunately I've got a decent size cupboard that everything fits in, but it's still in a lot of misc gear. Eventually a giant tea crate fit the bill and was sturdy enough to carry almost everything with the exception of the switches and the server.

Conveniently there's a massive piece of plywood in the garage that should make a new box with ease.

Thanks to Dave (Pumpkin) who chatted about LIAB a while back for the uber-switch, nice big Cisco should be ample. 48 GBit ports and takes care of DHCP duties for the LAN. Pretty much the biggest thing going into the box so it has to be the basis for the foot print.

Base and sides cut, will be almost as tall as it is wide and just deep enough for the switch, power cables and cat 5 cables coming from the front. The box has to fit into a specific place in my house so cant be too much bigger than the original tea crate.

That said, its a trade off to make sure everything fits, so it'll be pretty close over all.

Above the switch is a shelf, just over 2U above the base to leave enough room for power bricks and plugs, as well as a second switch if needed.

The shelf slots into the grooves nicely but needs reinforcing.

End of the first session of building and the shelf is having a reinforcing strip added to the front to give some grip to pull it out and stop it deflecting once it has cables and such on top.

More to come in the next couple of days as the first use is next weekend at THaTLAN 2

Cooking with Music

With the purchase of the new MiniTop for the car, and the subsequent lack of GPS making it a bit useless for that, the reserve function got setup.

In the kitchen before this was a laptop on top of the fridge and some speakers under the upper cupboards with a sub on top. 

Replacing all of this:

...with this:

The volume knob also shifted with the reduction in cabling to under the cupboards against the fridge. Substantially tidier than before and sit next to the tablet itself.

The tablet will go into a wooden surround to hold it in place more securely, once it's made, which it isnt yet. So in the mean time it'll sit on top of the chopping board.

So far it's a success! although it's not hooked up to the music store as yet. But it will be.