I was posting a couple images in another thread and figured I would start my own.  I recently built a new ham shack / man cave.  I wanted something that would be customised for my uses.  Here are few pictures.  Sorry they are blurry, I used my camera phone.

The goal is to have this room completely powered by solar and batteries.  I will also put in a generator transfer switch so it can be run that way also.

Here is a couple pictures of the framing and the door that I used.  I picked up the door from work.  It was the door to the old server room.  They built a new room and were going to trash the door.  I had other ideas :)





Floor framing and surfacing.  I ran PVC through the floor from one end of the room to the other so I could run cables back and forth without having them laying on the floor.







The drywall



Building the ventilation panel.  This panel has 4 120mm fans that together will draw about 1.5amps at 12v.  There is a LED indicator light in the center so I'll know when it's on.  With all the other gear in the room these fans cannot be heard.





The panel installed and doings it's job.  The steel cable you see will be for lighting.  I have two of them running the length of the room.  I'm going to charge them with 12v and hang LED lighting from them.


Still in the process of getting everything in and wired.  Excuse the mess.

Racks


Desk


I need to get my good camera charged and get some pictures.  I kind of wish I had the patience to get some better pictures along the way.  This is the first time I've ever done anything like this.

Just a thought...

If you're wanting to run multiple PCs, you might consider getting a rackmount server and running VMware ESXi (freeware!). At that point you could run multiple OSes and apps and access all of them from one laptop / pc.

ETA: nice job, and good thinking on the cable run.

I actually do run a bunch of VMs in Xen on SUSE.  I'm a huge dork and have all kinds of different servers and such doing various things.  No I don't need all the physical hardware but It's certainly nice to have.  I have a few boxes that are purpose built and left alone.  The others I play around with.  The next project is to convert my IPcop firewall / router to Vyatta.

Ah, I should have figured that you'd have it well under control... after all, it takes a real geek to want / have rack mounts in their server room / ham shack.

I also just noticed that this was your first project like this. Very well done for a first timer.

Thank you Sir!  My old shack was in the basement and that is where all the racks started out.  I made lots of mistakes while building the new room but I learned from all of them.  Can't wait to try something like this again.

Fargin' showoff!  

Seriously... very cool!

Man, that door makes me feel like I'm lookin' at the local police dept. substation.  I'd have to get used to a door like that in my house.  

You could also put some bells on the top of that door so when it opens they'll jingle and you could say "Welcome to Radio Shack!"


  I crack myself up!  

ETA:  Super Snazzy Man Room / Ham Shack / Gun Room / Server Central.  Me like!

ETA #2  The floating floor with the pipe chases for cabling is a super great idea!  Excellent!

+1

excellent idea, honestly i dont think i would of thought of that.

Awesome dude.

Keep the updates coming

Alright, here are some slightly better pictures that reveal more of what needs to be finished :)  So easy to hid mistakes with crappy pictures :)

Here is a majority of my communications gear.  Still have a lot of cleaning up to do there.



Here is the PVC conduit coming up next to the desk.  Only have a couple Ethernet cables at the moment. As you can see I also need to install the floor boards :)



Better picture of the desk.  I have a Linux box and Windows Box.



The door which still needs trim.  Pay no attention to the mess outside the door :)  Outside of the door there I have another desk that I use for all my soldering and such.



This is where the coax enters the room.  I also have a 16x16 whole near the bottom.  This is going to house a furnace filter to help keep the dust down.  You can also see a piece of conduit coming out of the wall at the floor.  This is where all the 12v wiring will go into a switch box and then to the ceiling for the ventilation panel, lights, etc.  I currently only have the ventilation panel wired.  



The patch panel the I built with a rack panel blank and a bunch of Amphenol N Bulkheads.  You can also see the 2M amp below it.  I have the amp wired into the patch panel so that I can patch any radio or antenna to it.



Another image of the racks



The server / data rack

is all I have to say about that

I'd love to have a setup like that.  Very nice work on your part.

Looks like the OP is a heck of a craftsman. Very nice shack.

:) I had to laugh when I read that.  This is the first time I've ever done anything like this.  I appreciate the compliment.

Now that would be funny.  I have a Brother in Law who does vinyl stickers.  I'll have to see what he can come up with.

I'm doing some experimenting with 12v lighting.  These are cold cathode lights that draw about 400mA per set.  They are fairly bright, put off little to no heat and have a long life.  They do an excellent job of lighting up the room.  I may go with these instead of the LED lights I was thinking about.  I may add one more set to the middle but I really don't think it's all that necessary.

Are those an ON / OFF proposition, or is there a way to reduce the brightness?

I've never messed with those before –– are they fragile?

Looks like you're getting a good deal of light for a very low current draw.

More about the beams man... those look sweet

They are either on or off.  Not real fragile at all.  The cathode itself is actually encased in a clear polycarbonate tube.  The intended purpose of these is for PC case lighting.  These are the Logisys brand and I bought them on eBay.
http://cgi.ebay.com/12-DUAL-WHITE-COLD-CATHODE-LIGHT-KIT-MOD-CASE-BRIGHT_W0QQitemZ380141762349QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item588236f72d&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14

Beams?  I'm a little lost.  What are you looking for more info on?

It's slang referring to the lights.  Like an Eagle wit da beamz, home!!    Referring to a Desert Eagle with a tactical light.

BTW, the lights look great.  Now you have me thinking of other applications for them.  SHTF lighting comes to mind.

Does the lighting generate any RF noise?

I haven't noticed any.  However the flourescent lights out in the garage definitely do.  I'll have to play around with these to see if they make noise on any particular band.  Thus far they seem to be OK.

––Scott

Today I ran the wiring up into the ceiling for the 12v lighting.  Basically I have two 1/8 steel cables strong across the room.  One of them is charged with + and the other -.  To spruce up the look of the wiring I bought a stainless steel outlet blank and attached a Anderson Powerpole connector to it.  Then I used the mating connector and connected those wires to the steel cables.  I'm still on the fence on what I'm going to use to attach the wires to the steel cables.  I may just go with alligator clips.

Unfortunately nothing ever goes real smooth.  I climbed up in the attic to install the electrical box and had very little room to work.  Second I used a drywall hole saw which appartently doesn't work real well with finished drywall because I made a huge mess.  Now I need to go back with some putty and repaint.  Oh well, next time I'll use the dremel and appropriate bit.

Oh yeah, I picked up the fourth rack that I had been wanting.  I moved all of the computer equipment into it and will be using the original rack to put in a couple monitors.  The black rack that is in the picture below will eventually be replaced with a brushed aluminum Chatsworth rack.  I cannot remember the brand of the black rack but it doesn't have the quality of the Chatsworth stuff.

I do have a question for you and anyone else doing this in the basement. It is the best place considering weather is the most likely reason to need this. If your power goes out for an extended period will your

basement stay dry without a doubt? The cbovious is do you have a sump pump. The other not as much. I do not have one. My basement has trenches behind the wall that enter the sewer. Perfectly legal when the

house was built in the 30's. It was the first question I asked before I bought the house. I even got it in writing from the town board. Problem is over the years since I moved in the geniuses fo the street department

have somehow directed run off into the sewer if it rains really hard. Not a big deal EXCEPT for one time in 14 years i've llivved here. We are 15 miles or so from the Mississippi on much higher ground. The land is

really flat for a distance around town before it gradually heads down hill to the river. Runoff is collected in a small resivoir from street run off ect. There is a pumping station that moves it through the pipeline to the

river. If it loses power for an extended period my basement may flood if narural runoff doesnt happen fast enough. This is very unlikely to occur but has happened. So much run off occured so fast the sewer

couldnt take anymore so water ende d up in the basement. It didnt back up just had no place to go. Something to think about

have you thought about a french drain for any overflow? you could make it so you control what flows into it with a drain cap.

You could try a backflow device.
It wil shut if the water backs up.

Would that work in your case?

I live way up on top of a hill and have never had water issues.

I have a back flow device. Put it in when we finished the basement. In this case the sewer didn't back up but stopped flowing. The water didn't have anyplace to go. We are on a hill of sorts. Just a really wide hilltop

with a lot of fields. If we get a very heavy rain the pumping station moves it to the Mississippi faster. I'm just mentioning it in case people THINK they have a dry basement but may not in reality. I have insurance for

sewer backup . Since it didn't backup  it didn't kick in. I DID have flood insurance on my first policy when we moved in. It was added when we finished the basement about a year after moving in. It was cancelled as

we did not live in a flood plane.(sp?) This was due to the town declaring something or other and insurance companies not covering due to something in Illinois law. When we switched companies it was not

renewed and we didn't catch it. Believe me their are a ton of people at each board meeting trying to get them to declare something so we can get flood insurance. If we could get it the cost would  only be 30-50

bucks a year. There is speculation the pumps did ot kick on when they was supposed to. The town has a policy for it but I believe it has a high deductible like 10-20K. They wont admit it though. There where over

100 basements that have never had water in them that flooded. Most of these houses are well over 50 years plus. I bought mine from the original owner and it never had water in it other than what runs through the

drain tiles below the floor. It was built in 1937. We have had several inch per hour rains back to back. 12-18 inch culverts in the driveways not able to keep up. Not one drop in the basement.


Every remote and all three cordless phone where on the floor that day. Damn kids. Remote dried out and new phone time. Xbox 360 power supply was replaced for 15 bucks used.  We lost 1800 sq feet of

carpet and padding. Could have had it dried by pros but it would have cost more than it was to put in new. I wanted it away from the walls fast anyway. Drywall wasn't hut at all. Water was only in there 10- 15

minutes max. Ran fans for days behind the walls. there's 12 inches between the concrete and drywall.  Funny I picked up several things that where on the floor and put them on a shelf the evening before that would

have totaled about 3 thousand dollars. I also moved a gun safe out 3 days before. I did have 22 long guns in cases leaning against the wall. No harm after marathon cleaning session. I was going to move them to the

new location that afternoon.


We are painting the floors and using area rugs just in case.

The other day I got to thinking that it would be nice to have a computer next to radios so that I could use the remote control software, record audio, log, etc. That got me looking for rack mounted LCD which are quite expensive. Then it occurred to me that the two 17″ monitors that were on my desk don’t work there all that well because of the poor viewing angle. So I decided to move them over to the racks where they sit now. It’s unfortunate that now I need to buy another Lian Li case and build up another PC to replace the one I stole for this project :) This is turning into a very expensive project!



You can also view a majority of this all on my website http://www.scottchapman.net