We make from the old “stupid” TV - new and “smart” and that “beautiful” was

It is enough to take something old and unnecessary, take something new and unnecessary, add a little scotch, free time and a drop of solder to get such a wow useful thing.

It was evening, there was nothing ...

I have a TV set (an old TOSHIBA with an LCD display), it hangs on the wall and collects dust (dust is regularly wiped off =)). They turn it on only when we have guests and, as a rule, only to watch movies from a laptop or tablet connected to it.
')
And I still, to this day, live and distribute the ASUS WL-500W internet router, which, once with a soldering iron, was expanded from 32 MiB to 128 MiB memory. And he was engaged, in addition to being a home NAS and WEB server, mainly because he was on the distribution of torrent files 24/7. And the WL500W had a loyal friend - AgeStar SUB3AHT with a terabyte HDD inside, which it kept all these torrent files. And it was common for them to distribute 70-80 GiB traffic per day. Time passed, much has changed. WL500W is now just a router (though the SVN server is still running on it for its own needs). A box with a disc has long been lying in a drawer.

And more recently, in my household, the Mini Xplus TV Box H24 (1GiB version, hereinafter referred to as MiniX) was launched under the control of all of us, Android 4.0. A review of this very interesting thing is here , here and there . As a matter of fact, after getting acquainted with these articles, I bought myself such a computer, as well as his brother, with an increase of less than the MK802 Mini PC , but he is just as sensitive and defiant. One of the friends' moss, being my guest, as in the well-known fairy tale - “He grabbed the Maw, like a crocodile, MK802 Mini PC ...” and that evening took him to live to his home. And MiniX stayed in the drawer until better times.

In the meantime, my daughter has grown up. And she became interested in watching cartoons. And finally found, and for television work. And then, with a meticulous glance, I looked around at all that was lying in the drawer of the table and decided that it wasn’t good for “all this wealth” to lie like that. I connected all this stuff (TV, MiniX with its power supply, keyboard, mouse, USB flash drive and HDD box with its own power supply through the active four-port USB Hub, who would have thought with his power supply) and was horrified looking at everything this mess. And the main thing to hide it out of sight will not work, because together with the MiniX comes an IR remote control, which is not very convenient, but sometimes useful. Separately, I did not want to buy a media player, due to their limited functionality.

I went to fly to the bazaar ...

And I bought there, not a samovar at all, but the shortest and thinnest “USB hose”, which the smallest wireless keyboard of the iPazzPort Google TV 2.4G mini wireless keyboard with laser pointer (which is extremely useful for remote control of a cat) and touchpad could find. As well as a small USB Hub for 4 ports and double-sided tape.



A few words about the keyboard. Despite the not very high price, the first thing I want to say is “How pretty!”, It was made really not bad. The second thing I want to say is “how not familiar.” Third, I just want to use it as a laser pointer. In general, you need to get used to. By the way, there is a multitouch on the touchpad!

Ivan went to the room ...

And he put it on the table, no, not the toad, but all that “fly” from the bazaar brought and that which was gathering dust in the drawer.

During the field tests, it turned out that the MiniX is quite noticeably heated, especially when watching videos from the network while the network interface is actively working. I wanted to hide it inside the box, but after testing it was decided to place it in front of the ventilation grille, on the side of the HDD box. This box is able to turn on the fan and adjust its speed depending on the temperature (there is a thermocouple that can be placed where we want). Included with the MiniX is a stand, in the legs of which I made the drillings and screwed them to the grid with tiny bolts.



Also, bundled with the MiniX is a power supply that produces 5V / 2A. It was decided to get rid of the unit, and take 5V from the HDD power supply in the box. Cut the plug cord, make a hole on the back of the AgeStar SUB3AHT and cling to 5V, observing the polarity.



Now we insert a hard disk into AgeStar SUB3AHT and fasten the thermocouple. Putting it all together and see what happened in the first stage. And it turned out, I must say, quite reliably and accurately.



Now we are looking for a place under the USB Hub. It is useful to me when I want to connect an external keyboard and mouse or USB flash drive. Fasten the USB Hub to double-sided tape (as if we were living without tape). The minimum length of the wire that I managed to find is 1M. Cut the wire and shorten it - it was too lazy, I promised myself to go to the store with the radio parts and buy USB connectors there and make the wires right. In the meantime, I gently twisted them and hid them in a stand for the AgeStar SUB3AHT.



Now it remains to connect everything. After what was the first time, it looks more than decent (sorry, I forgot to take a photo). And that's what happened in the end.

Some more photos in the light of day.

As a result, it is not a shame to put this box on the shelf next to the TV, where it will be available for the IR remote control and will be pleasing to the eye. And according to the functionality, this design will give odds to any media player from the store. Now she (this design) itself downloads movies from the network using Torrent client for Android. It is also able to view files from a local network, streaming video from the Internet, in general, everything that Android can today. The airflow from the fan in the AgeStar SUB3AHT contributes to the additional cooling of the MiniX, if desired, the fan can be turned off, there is a switch on the rear panel.



The thought that this thing should be done in the post-apocalyptic style of Fallout does not leave the head. But we need to think things through and find time, maybe this idea will come true.