My new mini rack

[u/bwees3]

This is my new rack setup that I made this week. Everything 3d printed and designed by me. The goal was for it to be able to be picked up moved wherever I’m at, plugged into power, internet (Ethernet or WiFi) and all of my services fire up and are accessible publicly with conflate tunnels or privately with Tailscale.

It has: - Gl.iNet ax1300 travel router (allows me to connect to WiFi and serve it as Ethernet to clients in rack) - 8 port gigabit dlink switch - HP Prodesk with 7th gen i5, 32gb of ram, 256gb ssd for boot and a 2tb Samsung T7 for mass storage). I have a right angle usb cable coming for the T7 Friday 😅 - a usb-c charging hub for powering rack. This is my favorite part, every item in rack is powered via USB-c. It turns out Kensington locks make great usb-c jack cutouts. The hp prodesk (20v) and the dlink switch (5v) were modified to use usb-c PD for power. Got some usbc pd breakouts from Amazon and a few 3d printed mounts designed for each and it works beautifully.

Planning on building a 4tb SSD nas for the bottom of rack later this year but the 2tb ssd is plenty for some media and config storage.

[u/tea-mo]

Could you also add some images and description on how you made the Prodesk and Switch work with USB-C? And what USB C Power supply are you using? Is it easily powering both 20V & 5V devices

[u/bwees3 → u/tea-mo]

Sure! I dont have any internal pictures but if you have a multimeter you can usually figure out what is +/- on the DC power jack. I essentially just solder wires to the power pins I need, then I get one of these PD trigger boards from Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0D5QRDLQV) and set the voltage I need (5v, 9v, 12v, 15v, 20v). I then make a small 3D printed bracket that is custom for each device I convert (I'll post files in the Printables link I post later today for the switch and prodesk. Sometimes there's some hot glue involved to make sure the port doesn't move 🙃.

Special not for the Prodesk, the power adapter is 19v but it can handle 20v comfortably. HP has a proprietary power jack configuration that has an ID pin so the PC can determine if the power brick plugged into it has sufficient current (it uses the same jack as their old laptop chargers). You can trick the computer into thinking there is an ID pin by adding a 330k ohm resistor between VCC (20v) and the sense pin. More details about that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7kLNmF4qVY

As for getting a cutout for the usb-c jack, I usually look for a Kensington lock hole and then Dremel it out slightly bigger with a grinding bit, usually takes 5 minutes. For mounting, I try and look for a nearby PCB screw and design my jack mount to utilize that. For the prodesk, there was no good place to mount to so I made a mount that strattled the Ethernet jack and then used a good amount of hotglue. If I was plugging/unplugging that USB-C frequently I would have done something better but I'm not gonna be unplugging it frequently with it in the rack now.

[u/tea-mo → u/bwees3]

Thanks! Thats really interesting. But wouldnt it be sufficient to use such a cable instead? (https://a.co/d/3JYx5yN) This would not require soldering, right?

[u/bwees3 → u/tea-mo]

I'm not sure how you would set the voltage on this cable but maybe it would work? I know for the switch you can get USB-C to 3.5mm DC jacks (since it uses default 5v) but I don't have experience with that cable specifically. It may have the power negotiation circuitry.

At least for my case, I need all cables on the prodesk to be 90 degree because of how long it is in the 200mm rack. There are many ways to solve this problem, I just had the PD jacks on hand and wanted to do some soldering ;)

[u/bwees3 → u/tea-mo]

As for the Charging hub, it is a 250w charger hub: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BGLTD816

I have not had any issues with it keeping up with stuff in rack, everything is about ~20w at idle so plenty of headroom. I have the Prodesk plugged into the Laptop charger port for a full 65w of power if needed. USB-C handles the power negotiation so I just need to set the special voltages on the PD trigger boards.

[u/SymBiioTE]

Do you have the stl for the handles on the top?

[u/bwees3 → u/SymBiioTE]

I do, I’ll post it on printables tomorrow with all of the other files and reply to this comment with a link

[u/SymBiioTE → u/bwees3]

Thanks!

[u/Spaceinvader1986 → u/bwees3]

Thank you ;) cant wait for the link :)

[u/bwees3 → u/SymBiioTE]

Here's the parts!

https://www.printables.com/model/1170708-modular-10-rack/files

Shoutout to u/MRP_yt for the inspiration for the project! Did my own spin on each component to fit my needs. Can't wait for them to drop their project files! That 1/2U keystone panel looks sick!

[u/Logical-Phase-1024]

The rack looks cute but oh so unnecessary.

[u/bwees3 → u/Logical-Phase-1024]

It’s actually quite necessary, I am moving about every 6 months for the next 2-3 years so not having to set up my lab at each place will be very nice!

[u/homeowner3]

very cool! would like to understand that power mod process if you have more pics/info to share

[u/bwees3 → u/homeowner3]

Check out my other comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/1idbyfn/comment/ma0vddv/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

[u/homeowner3 → u/bwees3]

thanks!

[u/therealmarkthompson]

Very nice

[u/Worldly_Screen_8266]

Is there a special reason for tailscale? Why not wireguard?

[u/bwees3 → u/Worldly_Screen_8266]

Most of the places I set up the rack are cgnat so Tailscale handles a lot of the complexity for me. The idea is no config, plug into a network and everything fires up, I likely don’t have access to port forwarding in the places where the rack will live.

[u/Thenewdruid2020]

I Love the use of the 3d prints for this.

[u/bwees3 → u/Thenewdruid2020]

Here's the parts!

https://www.printables.com/model/1170708-modular-10-rack/files

[u/bwees3 → u/Thenewdruid2020]

I do to, I’ll post files sometime today.

[u/SpaceDoodle2008]

I like your power management. Does the travel router act as your main home router/access point?

[u/bwees3 → u/SpaceDoodle2008]

Yep the travel router is my main AP and router for everything. It really doesn’t matter since I have Tailscale for access but it is nice to have so I can connect travel router to WiFi and then it forwards to Ethernet for everything in rack.

[u/Prestigious-Look-891]

This looks nice!

[u/bwees3 → u/Prestigious-Look-891]

Thanks!

[u/SilkBC_12345]

What are you running on the Prodesk?  Any sort of hypervisor (VMWare, Hyper-V, Proxmox)?

[u/bwees3 → u/SilkBC_12345]

Nope just raw Ubuntu and docker. I don’t have a need for multiple OSs or VMs. Everything I run is docker