Nearly finshed my jukebox !!

[Lave Laar]

After a long time I'm really close to finally finshing my jukebox.  
It's based around Chris' DosCab and is a floor model.  Still looking for some black square speaker grills for the speakers though, but I can't seem to find any.  I can only find plastic ones and I want them to be of metal.
The overlay is not really finished either, but I wanted to show the work so far.  What do you guys think ?

[Generic Eric]

Cool

Is it connected to your home network?  Im guessing thats how you would add songs.


My real question is who did you bend the top?

Looks good

[Lave Laar]

Yepp,  the tranfer is done trough the network.

The jukebox is built of particle-board and the top is a thin piece of masonite bent over the board and nailed in place.  I've got some pictures of it if you're interested to see the details.

[Mameham]

I'd like those details too!



- Eric

[Lave Laar]

OK.  I put together a quick webpage (actually IrfanView did   ) with the pictures I took during the building period.  Enjoy ...

http://home.online.no/~lindgrd/jukebox/

[Ted_Striker]

Really nice work... .I like the vinyl covering idea.  I was at Spencer's Gifts in our local mall and they had rope light like you used with a little box attached.  The box allowed a whole bunch of effects like tracing lights, flashing to the beat of the music etc...   I don't know if your lights do anything but if you are interested you may want to check out your local spencers.

Very nice work.

[Chris]

Nicely done!

I was going to ask if the rope lights were chasers or not.... flashing to the beat would also be nifty!

I wonder if there's a way to get your hands on real jukebox bubble tubes.....

--Chris

[Lave Laar]

The ropelight do have a box connected which allow the lights to flash in various patterns.  I just thought it looked better on the pictures when they where all lit.  They do not flash to beat unfortunately.    
I live in Norway so I don't have access to a Spencers store either.    
The covering is not vinyl, it's actually artificial leather.  
I wanted to have some kind of a curved cover for the rope lights, but I couldn't find anything to use within a reasonable pricerange.  I tried to keep the cost down to a minimum and if i should have someone make me something like that in plexi it would have cost around $500.  The total for the whole project was around $200.

[Johnny]

Hi Lave Laar,

Nice work indeed!  


- Johnny
    Oslo

[aj6500]

Lave: flashing lights are a must!  I'm 1/2 through rigging a pair of blacklights to flash to mine.  I have a couple stores in town that sell a lamp sound controller.  It seems to work pretty well in the store and I plan on picking one up to run mine.  The control 110v lamps so you may need a converter.   I don't recall the cost, but if I think it's under $30 US.  If you want I could pick one up and ship it to you for cost+exact shipping.  If you give me until this friday I'll know how well they work.

[Lave Laar]

Thanks for the offer that's really nice of you, but I don't think it's worth the trouble.  I suppose it could work with a converter to 230v but I don't need it that bad.   However, it would be great if you could tell me the name of the product and the manufacturer.  That way it may be possible to find the same or similar product created for the european marked.  
Anyways, if you buy the controller yourself let us know how it works with your jukebox.

[aj6500]

I picked one up this afternoon, $25 US.  I set it up with a pair of black light fluorescent tubes.  It worked pretty well.  Then I found the instructions that say "DO NOT use The Speccial F/X uUnit with FLUORESCENT Lighting Fixtures".  It doesn't say why tho', emailed the manufacturer tonight to ask.  If it's nothing major it's going back in.

It has a microphone to pick up external sound as well as an audio input that bypasses the microphone.  It's called the Special F/X Unit, and is made by Can You Imagine.

www.cyi.net    
Cyimail@cyi.net

I think I'm going to pull the case apart and take a look at the circuit, it can't be that hard to make.  More than likely it's just a color organ circuit w/o the frequency dividers.

[Lave Laar]

Don't know if you got an answer from CYI, but when I searched google for a color organ circuit I stumbled across the following :

> hi, i am looking for a "color organ" circuit diagram
> and parts list to flash 1 or more channels of 120v Fluorescent
> lights to my stereo, i would prefer one that uses a microphone
> (instead of a direct connection to the stereo) to pick up the
> sound.

For applications were the lights switch on and off frequently
fluorescent lights are suboptimal for two reasons: they require high
start up power and their life is greatly reduced. It may even be that
the start up time for the lamps is too long for your application. Use
normal light bulbs instead.

Guess this is the reason why they advise against using it with fluorescent light...

[aj6500]

I got an email back from CYI, basically said they advise against it and doing so was at my own risk, but wouldn't say why.  So I did it anyway just to see.  Worked great, flashed just slightly off beat, but not enough to notice unless you looked for it.  So in the spirit of discovery I left it on for about 12 hours.  While doing so I did a search for the same thing, found a site saying that using fluorescent lights was a bad idea as they will likely burn out quickly or worst case, cause a fire.

Checked the tubes later and voila!  both are dead.  Back to the drawing board.  Looked damn good while they worked.  Hopefully it's just the tubes and the sockets are ok.

[BobA]

There is a way around the problem you are having.  The Cold Cathode lights sold for case modding can be used.  Some have a built in single channel light organ that was designed to flash the tube with sound.  The lights work off 12V and are designed to flash with music quite well.   I have one in my Jukebox (in progress) and it is a bit sensitive to adjust but once set seems to work fine.

BobA

[aj6500]

I'd considered the CC route, but no-one I talked to could tell me how bright they were.  Most I've seen were made to illuminate the interior of cases, so I didn't know if they would be bright enough, or big enough to look ok on the exterior of a cab.  My juke is pretty good sized as I bypassed the PC speaker route and went straight to real speakers to shake the windows coupled with an old home stereo receiver for power.  

Anyway, tonight I went to walmart and found a set of 15" neon tubes w/a built in mic for $15 each.  They are 12v, intended for cars and should be low power draw so i'm going to run them off the PC like a CC.  The downside is the manufacturer says not to use "near" computers as they may intefere w/their operation.  What "near" is I don't know, so in again in the spirit of discovery I plan to find out.

Ain't electical thingies fun?  BOOM!

[BobA]

I wish I had bought mine at Walmart.  Alot cheaper then a computer store.  The ones for cars are basically the same unit in more protective mounts.  Better mounting for less,  you have to give mass marketing credit for that.

Hope your experiment works out.  Mine is very visible in daylight but I don't know if it would be bright enough to shine thru a marquee if I were to cover it.   Only trying will tell.

BobA

[aj6500]

They work fine so far, 0 problems.  I have one mounted on each side of my cab, the one closest to the pc is about 12" above it.  Intalled easy, cut the wires short(came w/like 50 feet of wire to the 12v plug) and hooked into the wires I have running my cab cooling fan.  I bought purple, but they are more of a pink/purple the than the color I wanted.  But no biggie there.  The only downside is I have to adjust sensitivity for 2 tubes instead of the single adjustment with the other setup.  I'll post a pic in a while.  My cab is in a middle phase right now.  I built and designed using 5 buttons for Arcade Jukebox.  But I switched to VMJ, so I have a USB keypad kind of stuck on the surface until my Ipac and new buttons from Happ get around to showing up.  I have a smaller keypad wired up for the Ipac that will be mounted into the CP.

[BobA]

Sounds good.

By the way.  Sorry about hijacking this thread Lave Laar.

BobA