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[wierd]

Awhile ago, I needed a new HDD, and FAST. (My old one died a terrible death from cumulative bad sector count, resulting in an unreliable drive.)

Since I did not want to wait around, I cheesed it, and went to walmart, and grabbed one of these:

Spoiler: Image of item (click to show/hide)

Inside, there is a simple 3.5 inch HDD, and a USB to SATA converter adapter strapped to it. The drive is mounted on 4 rubberized "Peg screws" that go into the 4 mounting screw locations on the sides of the 3.5 inch drive.

I wanted the HDD, and did not care one wit about the enclosure.  But with it laying around, totally unpopulated and sad, I now have a silly idea.  Why not use the enclosure to make a small HTPC? (Home Theater PC- Something like a homebrew Roku or AppleTV box)

As you can see from the image on the back, there are stock provisions for a USB3 "Hdd cable" port, a 12v DC barrel connector, and a key lock dongle hole.

Some slight modifications, and the USB3 "HDD cable" port could be opened up a bit to accept a very short USB extension cable.
The 12V barrel connector hole can be used As-is, and the lock hole looks big enough to pass a mini HDMI port through without modification.

So, how to mount a SBC inside?

How about THIS SBC--
http://www.minnowboard.org/meet-minnowboard-max/

On the back of this 2.5 inch to 3.5 inch bay adapter (See the large holes at the approx 3 inch zones? I bet I could coax this SBC's mounting screw locations to work with those using some washers and back facing hex nuts)
http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-inches-Drive-Mounting-Bracket/dp/B00FSVL95Q/ref=sr_1_17?&ie=UTF8&qid=1434595017&sr=8-17&keywords=2.5+inch+bay+adapter

Route the 12v DC supply to THIS 12v to 5v converter, and then to both the SBC's DC in, and to a Molex to SATA power converter cable
http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/281684230409?lpid=82&chn=ps

(Pinout on the white molex side is +12v, GND, GND, +5v. We can get all of these voltages from attaching to the 12v barrel plug, and from the 5v converter)

Then put an actual 2.5 inch SATA HDD on the actual slide bracket side of the bay converter.

The SBC has built in Wifi, so we will have network connectivity without having to cut a hole for an ethernet keystone. (We could do that if we REALLY wanted, but we can just ignore the RJ45 jack. This is supposed to be an easily repositioned HTPC box after all.)

We then run very short extension cables from the mini HDMI port to the lock hole, and from the USB3 port to the widened USB port hole. Secure with some ghetto hotglue or something on the inside. Maybe some thick goopy epoxy cement? Just something to keep the port ends secured to the enclosure.

That SBC has a TRUE SATA interface connector on it, so we can drive the HDD for mass storage, use the microSD card as the boot media, and run the x86 flavor of XMBC, or some similar HTPC friendly linux distro with x86 support.

The USB2 port plug can be populated with a low profile bluetooth dongle, which would let us use a bluetooth remote control with it. (along with bluetooth keyboard and mouse, gamepad, etc-- if we REALLY want to.)

Since I already HAVE the plastic shell enclosure, the build will only set me back about 130$. (I already have a low profile bluetooth dongle, some smallish 2.5in sata HDDs, etc.)

Any thoughts?

[wierd]

Nothing? No thoughts at all?

The 12v wallwart that comes with the device is 12v @ 2.5 amps, or approx 30W.  From what I can tell, that is more than enough to run the SBC with that DC-DC voltage converter, even with a drive running off it. (A full 15 watts can be pulled for the SBC at full load, even though the device's stock TDR is 6W for the dual core unit. That leaves plenty of breathing room for USB devices, like the Bluetooth dongle and whatever we hang off the back-- before we saturate the 5v line.-- and that leaves a good 15W or so left on the 12v line to run the HDD off of.)

I honestly think this looks doable.  I just wonder if it is a good idea before I sink any investment into making that enclosure into something.

(That SBC has some GPIO lines that I can drive a 3 color LED on, to make use of the plastic LED window on the front as well.)

This is an intel Atom system, sure- but it is running at 1.3ghz with two cores. I could reasonably drive a few emulators/older games on it in addition to the HTPC presentation system. Perhaps use it for NAS services. what have you.

Does this at least sound like a cool project to work on?

[Arx]

This board is hella' slow, wierd. But it looks cool to me! The only question is will you actually use an HTPC?

[wierd]

I have a roku now, but I dislike that I cannot play local media. (and the remote is quirky)

This could also double as a fairly fast NAS box, and a few other network functions if configured right.  Unlike a Roku or AppleTV, I wont be wearing mittens.

That SBC is not that bad, given its very tiny size. (3x4 inches. Smaller than a 3x5 index card) Its power draw is absolutely miniscule (6 watts!) and it has dual cores (meaning even if I have to resort to software decoding, the system wont be fully saturated.)

It is the very tiny form factor that I am looking for here.  The contenders are things like the Raspberry Pi, or a BeagleBone black. Both of those are single core ARM systems, usually with less than half the RAM of the Minnowboard, and neither has a real SATA interface. RPi runs at 900mhz, and the BBB runs at 1ghz. Both are single core.

Yes, it isn't an i3 or an i5.  It's an intel Atom.  I dont expect to play crysis on full settings. I view it about on par with an old celeron from about 6 years ago in terms of raw performance. It is also conveniently x86 architecture, meaning that if I REALLY wanted to, I could run x86 software on it, including windows, so I have more choices for possible OSes to run on it. It also has all the SSE instruction sets and all that jazz, where ARM platforms at best have THUMB2 and NEON instruction sets. (This bad boy has more registers, bigger registers too since the chip is x64 flavor, and a faster memory bus.)

There is no way a mini ITX can fit inside this enclosure. That means "Mini desktop boards" are completely off the menu.  Also, I NEED the low power draw nature of these tiny SBCs. That case is not designed to eliminate gobs and gobs of heat. Low power draw == low heat production == quieter operation, because there is less need for loud, noisy fans.

There are HTPCs built using the RPI platform running Raspbian that work just fine. Since this SBC is simply beefier on all fronts (4x the RAM, more than 2X total processor, Faster RAM, etc.) I cant imagine the minnowboard doing WORSE than the previously cited RPI2 model B.

(RE-reads Arx's reply-- Takes it to mean that this board-- Creative projects-- is slow, not that the SBC is slow. Feels silly now.)


Still, some more research wouldnt hurt.  Here's a review of the kind of integrated video (bay trail) found inside this flavor of atom SoC.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-HD-Graphics-Bay-Trail.103037.0.html

Supports hardware decoding of MPEG2, H.264, VP8, MVC video formats. H.264 is an MPEG4 format, so it should be able to decode a very large number of movie formats without having to resort to software decoding-- and can handle such decoding up to 4k resolution.

It should run quite nicely as a HTPC.

They say that it is able to run older titles, like HalfLife 2, on lowest settings at a decent framerate. So again, it should be quite amenable to having some older console emulators ran on it, and for running old retro windows titles (with a windows dual boot partition, or via WINE, since it is x86 based.)

[wierd]

Well, i've started some initial work on this project.

I now have the USB extender and the 12v power barrel connector installed, as well as a fully internal 4port USB2 passive powered hub and a SATA 2.5in HDD.  There is plenty of room for the Minnowboard.

I now need to order a mini HDMI extender, the 5v converter, and the minnowboard itself. 

Since I have plenty of room inside, I was thinking that this kind of recycling project would lend itself very well for use inside an RV;  One of those Verizon USB cellular modem dongles could be easily installed inside the chasis, giving cellular internet right in the package, running on 12v power.

I am going to save up for awhile, then buy the remaining bits and bobs.