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Intel Experience Pop Up – Day 3 Recap

by Carlyn Maw on December 4, 2013, no comments

Red and yellow wires form a flower mounted to a small motor

Wire and cardboard flower mounted on a motor salvaged from a DVD drive.

TLDR: Monday I turned the motor I salvaged Saturday into a spinning flower.  I added a dubious choice of cable to be the power cord for my motors-on-a-box project.  I checked to make sure the ATX power supply worked and used it to drive the motors in a half disassembled DVD drive.  

Next time I hope to have a better sense if pilfered composite jacks really are the way to go for the pirate power supply and/or if I should just cut the connectors off.  I am planning on stripping down the DVD drive and add bits of it to the box.

Monday I moved a little slower with a bit more puzzlement about what to do next. It was handy to be able to show off Barb’s glue-stick vibrobot, Horatio our mascot, and the other sundry done-ish projects while I did some less flashy work on the power supply.

Tutorials on how to convert ATX computer power supplies into benchtop power supplies litter the internet:

I’m struggling with how reusable I want this supply to be or if it should just be dedicated to the boxes & motors project. That is something I should check in with Barb and Jen about. Are they excited to have it as a resources for us all or am I just sort of entertaining myself? Also, all of the listed instruction sets involve buying parts but I’d like to keep our salvage-only as a design exercise. We’ll see.

Desolder jackAdding 22 AWG solidcore wire leads to RCA cableAdding 22 AWG solidcore wire leads to RCA cableAdding "power cord" to projectProject to date5V standby is alive
Power on wire is alive (Green)Green wire shorted to ground, 12V goes livePeripheral cable now works, tooTray removedMessing around with optical drive motorsTrying to figure out CD tray (sawed in half)
Spinning bowtie?Went ahead and made a flowerBattery powered wire flowerSpinning flowerSecured soldering ironCharging station and future project storage
The night night drawer

Things I did today:

  1. Desoldered composite input jack from VCR board with the idea that I’ll be using them somehow for the supply.
  2. Soldered solid-core wire onto the composite cable just incase I’ll want to plug it onto a breadboard.
  3. Tested the supply by checking both the “Stand-by” wire and the “Power-on” wire to make sure they read 5 V ( the purple wire and the green wire respectively ).
  4. Shorted the Power-on wire to ground to activate all the other power pins. (* I had a DVD drive as a load to prevent burning out the supply. )
  5. Checked one of the 12V wires on the 20 pin connector to make sure shorting the wire worked.
  6. Played with mentioned  CD/DVD drive attached to the 4 pin Molex connector.
  7. Semi-dismantled drive and played with the eject button and disk tray gears to get ideas about what to do next.
  8. Moved on and made a pretty flower.

Tools & Supplies used

  • Goes without saying: wire, wire strippers, pliers, snips and various screwdriver tips from the iFixit kit.
  • Heat gun to desolder jack
  • Soldering iron to attach wires
  • Electrical tape to seal up the soldered wires
  • Drill and 1/4 inch drill bit to make hole for wire
  • Hot Glue to stabilize wire lead out of the side of the box and wires on back of the DVD motor soldered Saturday and made into a flower today
  • Multimeter & aligator clips to check power coming from ATX supply