stewartvolland
New member
Hi all,
I wanted to share pictures of my way to shoot on location with the HVX. I needed a small case with redundant equipment that would contain everything I needed for a days work on location. First I had to get over the fact that I would have to purchase 2 Used Aluminum powerbooks instead of Macbook pros! The rest was easy. This Run 'N Gun box contains : 2 Powerbook 15 inch G4's, 2 Lacie 320 GB Bus powered (Firewire 800) Little Big Disks, Powerbook 120 volt power Adapter, 12 volt DC Powerbook Adapter, Exhaust Fan, Rechargeable 12 volt Fan Battery, 1 Air Exhaust Port, 2 air inlet ports, 12 volt receptacle (attached to case), 120 volt receptacle (attached to case), 1 fan switch, 1 battery charge switch, 1 car adapter switch, 1 SKB Brand Case (because of the Laptop Foam insert). The case functions like this: Two laptops live in the top part of the case separated by a piece of thin rubber, one is used for card dumping and the other is backup. the 2 Lacies are always connected via firewire 800 and the drives are daisy chained to each other. Since they are bus powered they eat up the laptop batteries a bit faster. The drives have about 290 GB of space after formatting, giving you a little over half a Terabyte of total storage or enough space for over 41- 8 Gig cards with redundancy. Because the drives are sitting in cut foam that acts as an insulator, you must have a way to cool them. I dug an air channel under each drive and added air inlets at the front of each drive. the fan in the center of the case pulls the air over the drives and thru the channels cooling them for about 18 hours. I just leave the fan running all day and recharge the battery at night in about 4 hours. All batteries and chargers and components are 12 volt to keep everything consistent. the air inlets and exhaust port are from a local Boat & Marine supply store.. they have all kinds of sealable boat things that work for this box. I also carry with me a 12 volt Battery Bag that I can use if I exhaust all 6 of my Powerbook batteries. It happens!! I then plug the Battery bag into the 12 volt receptacle on the side of the box and flip the car adapter switch to power the computer.. and I can charge the fan battery at the same time if I flip the other switch.. If I am back at the motor-home I can plug any extension cord into the side of the box to start charging the powerbook again. Works very well!! I also bought 2 -dual powerbook battery chargers to charge the Powerbook batteries quickly in the hotel room or in the motor-home. I also chose to use 15 inch powerbooks instead of 17 inch. I'm not a big fan of the 17 inch, too big and bulky, I'm not really editing anything in the field anyway. I'm sure though that anyone interested in making their own box could easily mod it to fit the 17 inch..
Costs:
Powerbooks used $1200 each
Lacie 320 GB Little Big Disks $ 429
12 volt adapter - $50
Box, fan,parts, wires, switches,batteries,chargers - $400
The great thing with this box is that you just carry it with you wherever you go - open the lid and dump your cards, shut it and go... totally trouble free... By the way, with the powerbooks, you can be copying a card and if you need to leave your location right in the middle of the copy, just sleep it, shut the box, and when you get to your next location , open it up and it will continue with the copy - no problems... pretty cool!!
I hope this solution works for anyone else that has this particular need... Happy New year!!
Stewart
Link to the photos
http://www.stewartvollandpictures.com/Galleries/powerbookrunngunbox/
Hotlink to the PDF with all the photos for printing
http://www.bigstreamservers.com/Clients//anonymous/StewsRunNGunHVXBox.pdf
I wanted to share pictures of my way to shoot on location with the HVX. I needed a small case with redundant equipment that would contain everything I needed for a days work on location. First I had to get over the fact that I would have to purchase 2 Used Aluminum powerbooks instead of Macbook pros! The rest was easy. This Run 'N Gun box contains : 2 Powerbook 15 inch G4's, 2 Lacie 320 GB Bus powered (Firewire 800) Little Big Disks, Powerbook 120 volt power Adapter, 12 volt DC Powerbook Adapter, Exhaust Fan, Rechargeable 12 volt Fan Battery, 1 Air Exhaust Port, 2 air inlet ports, 12 volt receptacle (attached to case), 120 volt receptacle (attached to case), 1 fan switch, 1 battery charge switch, 1 car adapter switch, 1 SKB Brand Case (because of the Laptop Foam insert). The case functions like this: Two laptops live in the top part of the case separated by a piece of thin rubber, one is used for card dumping and the other is backup. the 2 Lacies are always connected via firewire 800 and the drives are daisy chained to each other. Since they are bus powered they eat up the laptop batteries a bit faster. The drives have about 290 GB of space after formatting, giving you a little over half a Terabyte of total storage or enough space for over 41- 8 Gig cards with redundancy. Because the drives are sitting in cut foam that acts as an insulator, you must have a way to cool them. I dug an air channel under each drive and added air inlets at the front of each drive. the fan in the center of the case pulls the air over the drives and thru the channels cooling them for about 18 hours. I just leave the fan running all day and recharge the battery at night in about 4 hours. All batteries and chargers and components are 12 volt to keep everything consistent. the air inlets and exhaust port are from a local Boat & Marine supply store.. they have all kinds of sealable boat things that work for this box. I also carry with me a 12 volt Battery Bag that I can use if I exhaust all 6 of my Powerbook batteries. It happens!! I then plug the Battery bag into the 12 volt receptacle on the side of the box and flip the car adapter switch to power the computer.. and I can charge the fan battery at the same time if I flip the other switch.. If I am back at the motor-home I can plug any extension cord into the side of the box to start charging the powerbook again. Works very well!! I also bought 2 -dual powerbook battery chargers to charge the Powerbook batteries quickly in the hotel room or in the motor-home. I also chose to use 15 inch powerbooks instead of 17 inch. I'm not a big fan of the 17 inch, too big and bulky, I'm not really editing anything in the field anyway. I'm sure though that anyone interested in making their own box could easily mod it to fit the 17 inch..
Costs:
Powerbooks used $1200 each
Lacie 320 GB Little Big Disks $ 429
12 volt adapter - $50
Box, fan,parts, wires, switches,batteries,chargers - $400
The great thing with this box is that you just carry it with you wherever you go - open the lid and dump your cards, shut it and go... totally trouble free... By the way, with the powerbooks, you can be copying a card and if you need to leave your location right in the middle of the copy, just sleep it, shut the box, and when you get to your next location , open it up and it will continue with the copy - no problems... pretty cool!!
I hope this solution works for anyone else that has this particular need... Happy New year!!
Stewart
Link to the photos
http://www.stewartvollandpictures.com/Galleries/powerbookrunngunbox/
Hotlink to the PDF with all the photos for printing
http://www.bigstreamservers.com/Clients//anonymous/StewsRunNGunHVXBox.pdf
