Overview
The rack project is something iv been wanting to do for a long time, iv always had a fascination with building racks and managing networks so I decided to build myself and all in one production rack. It went through many stages of design.
Design & PreProduction
Shown above is a spreadsheet designed to plan unit locations and connectors configurations as well as track parts and cost for the project.
Beside is a pre production image I created in photoshop to help me visualise what I wanted it to basically look like and how many units I needed to order in the rack case.
All of these images are pre production and not final, the design is still being updated and finalised now.
As I said I wanted to have an all in one system so I wanted to have a full size network switch to remote control systems, send dante, etherdemx and anything else I may want. Its a managed switch so I can setup vlans to separate networks should I want to, I’m currently running it as a dumb switch as I don’t need anything specific.
I wanted onboard power to supply any kit inside or additional kit required. I also wanted an onboard computer or processor to run software which would tie into the front IO.
I also wanted some sort of stage box but with network function, since I didnt have a specific use case in mind I bought into a solution which can send and receive both xlr and dmx over network to mini stage boxes which can be placed wherever.
I played around with the idea of using a raspberry Pi to run the background software but it was limited in power and couldn’t run everything I wanted to. I still may incorporate it into the system again later on however I bought a 2018 mac mini to run the system. I was looking for a macbook at the time to run qlab so combing them both was perfect. The mac mini was powerful, up to date has loads of IO and the model I bought has 32GB of ram which made it ideal. The pavilion and scandal shows were the first time the rack has been in production, we had a couple of issues you can read about but it mostly went well.
Its still very much unfinished, I still have a load of the stage box functionality and software to sort out as well as all the network patching. Im also making custom ethercon cables to go with the stage boxes.