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Mac mini Built Into Wall

Posted by CmdrTaco on Sun Jul 31, 2005 11:35 AM
from the because-you-can dept.
Hardware Hacking Businesses Apple
Lilmuckers writes "I have just completed a project to build a Mac mini into the wall of my kitchen. It is hidden and everything works perfectly."
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story
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  • He couldn't find space for an Mac mini? It's only 6.5 inches wide and 2 inches tall.

    If space was such a critical factor just get the iMac with the computer built into the monitor. Add a wireless keyboard and wireless mouse and you can store them in a drawer when not needed.

    • Re:Real Estate Sure is Expensive these days (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rosco P. Coltrane (209368) on Sunday July 31 2005, @11:45AM (#13208192)
      He couldn't find space for an Mac mini? It's only 6.5 inches wide and 2 inches tall.

      Two things:

      1- there's more to space-taking than just the size of an object: put a 6.5 wide object in the middle of a desk, and you may well find it cumbersome, either because you work with large objects on the desk anymore, or because it gets in your way, or whatever. There's also the clutter of cables going to/from it that, in my experience, is much much more anoying than the space taken by the computer.

      2 - the guy may have wanted a neat, out-of-sight installation. Sticking your computer into the wall is the definite way of hiding your computer :-)

      Just so you know, my computer is hidden in a cupboard, and I have extra-long VGA, keyboard, mouse... cables going to my desk. It really is much cleaner visually, not to mention the lack of noise.
    • It isnt even built into the wall its just sitting under the kitchen unit. Shame as I could easily building one into the wall (along with a small vent).
    • Seriously, someone should tell this guy about the iMac [apple.com]. It's like Apple did all the work for him.

  • Unix built into a wall at ISCA (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Foofoobar (318279) on Sunday July 31 2005, @11:39AM (#13208148)
    This reminds me of an old story at the Univeristy of Iowa where they moved a computer department into a new building wherein years later they are trying to find a server. It is still serving packets and no one can seem to find it. Suddenly someone realize that it was probably left at the other building years before when they moved. They go over there and are looking around when someone says 'well the server would have been right here where this wall was. On a hunch, they rip open the wall and sure enough, there is the server still serving packets... 4 years later!

  • Wow, slashdotted already... (Score:4, Funny)

    by motbob (897343) on Sunday July 31 2005, @11:39AM (#13208149)
    The submitter really asked for it, didn't he?

  • All that work... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by FatSean (18753) on Sunday July 31 2005, @11:40AM (#13208154) Homepage Journal
    ...for an underpowered box. Shoulda rolled a household server. Meh.

    • ...for an underpowered box. Shoulda rolled a household server. Meh.

      Underpowered? This thing is in the kitchen, right? What the heck are you doing in your kitchen that a 1GHz+ processor running MacOSX is "underpowered [apple.com]"? Maybe "underpowered for a game rig", maybe "the kitchen is no place for a computer", but combining them? A computer in the kitchen will be used for recipies and e-mail. 1.25GHz is plenty for that. He won't even notice that the hard drive is less than 10k RPM.

  • I did the same with my Dell. (Score:5, Funny)

    by AtariAmarok (451306) on Sunday July 31 2005, @11:42AM (#13208166)
    I did the same sort of thing with my Dell running Windoes ME. Only it was my office, not my kitchen. It did not take much effort or thought. It was really more of a spur of the moment thing. That final blue creen was the last straw. Seconds later, the Dell was embedded in the drywall halfway up on the other side of the room.

    Also, a hint: If you have a G4 Cube you wish to hide in your kitchen, merely replace the current heating elements in your oven with the ol G4 Cube. It is both sightly and functional this way.

    • That funny comment reminded me of something I saw years ago touring the old Commodore plant in West Chester, PA.

      Somewhere in the piles of stuff I have accumulated over the years I have a picture. It's a picture of a picture frame encompassing an internal floppy drive embedded in the drywall behind it.

      The story goes that an engineer was up all hours of the night trying to debug a problem with his new floppy drive circuitry. After hours and hours of fruitless troubleshooting, he discovered that the problem wasn't with the circuitry, it was with the drive itself. The frustrated engineer picked up said floppy drive and whipped it at the wall - where it became one with it. The picture frame was later added for decoration.

  • It's not built into the kitchen... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Banner (17158) on Sunday July 31 2005, @11:42AM (#13208168) Journal
    Just the wires are. The MAC is under the cabinent.

    This isn't innovative at all.
    • I agree. The DVD drive he bought is almost as big as the mini. He could have still used his custom port panel and then built the mini into the wall just above the panel allowing access to the DVD drive.

    • Re:It's not built into the kitchen... (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 31 2005, @12:23PM (#13208418)

      Just the wires are. The MAC is under the cabinent.

      Actually, the MAC is inside the case, on the network card. The Mac is under the cabinet. (Well, OK, technically the MAC is inside the Mac, so the MAC is also under the cabinet, but still.)

  • And I... (Score:4, Funny)

    by felipin-sioux (772177) on Sunday July 31 2005, @11:42AM (#13208171) Homepage
    have just completed a copy of SpaceShipOne built entirely in Lego... It is hidden, but I tell you that everything works perfectly..
  • http://www.caffeine-junkies.com/?mode=articles&pag e=print&id=7 [caffeine-junkies.com] seems OK, and is all on one page.

    Manta

  • Arrrrrrrg (Score:5, Informative)

    by SuperBanana (662181) on Sunday July 31 2005, @11:47AM (#13208204)

    Here [Next] is [Next] my [Next] Mac [Next] Mini [Next] in [Next] a [Next] wall.

    For everyone who just wants to skip to the chase and see "a Mac Mini in someone's kitchen wall", which is what I wanted to see (not pictures of an effing butter knife [caffeine-junkies.com])...completed Mini in the wall [caffeine-junkies.com].

    Also, I think the entire W3C group has a simultaneous conniption with the author's use of "Clicky" to note an image that is also a link. That's the purpose, astoundingly, of a BLUE BORDER around an image...along with the cursor change, the tool tip, AND the display of a URL in the bottom of the browser window. I think it's probably worse than the usual "to see a picture of me and a llama, click here. To find out more about llamas, click here."

    I know I had a conniption, thanks to the atrocious grammar....

    • Re:Arrrrrrrg (Score:4, Insightful)

      by suitepotato (863945) on Sunday July 31 2005, @11:57AM (#13208265)
      And does it come under the heading ironic that this site boasts of W3C compliance, arrogantly stops IE users with some insult warning screen despite the site rendering just fine when you get past it, and violates probably a dozen of the rules laid down in the very first incarnation of Vincent Flanders' Webpages That Suck?.

      Wrapping yourself in anti-MS/anti-IE leetness and promptly do the website wrong anyhow seems to be getting alarmingly common.

  • Much ado about... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jez9999 (618189) on Sunday July 31 2005, @11:51AM (#13208226) Homepage Journal
    For alllll that effort he went through, this [caffeine-junkies.com] was the final result.

    I was expecting to see something beautifully plugged into the wall like an ATM or whatnot, but this just looks like a regular computer. If he'd just put the Mac Mini under the table it'd look the same. Haha.
  • My wife and I were discussing the purchase of a 37" 1080p lcd monitor [westinghousedigital.com] and mounting it in our bedroom mainly for watching dvd's. I thought that it would be cool to mount a Mac Mini in the wall in order to hide all the wires, and use the bluetooth keyboard and mouse to control it from across the room (in the bed, specifically).
    • I just bought this monitor a few days ago and finally hooked it up last night. It works great with my powerbook, and the picture is fantastic.

      If you are going to use it with the mac mini, you might consider attaching the mac mini itself to the back of the display. If you use a wall bracket to mount the display to the wall, there would be sufficient space. You can bolt a piece of metal between the monitor and the mounting bracket to serve as a mounting plate for the mac mini.

      Incidentally, as far as choice of computer goes.. the mac mini will drive the display fine at native resolution (so long as you use the DVI 1 input) and is a fairly cheap alternative way to watch DVD at 1080p, as an external scaler capable of doing this runs about $2000. It also makes a great display for photo slideshows as the resolution is fantastic.

      It's also worth noting that the display itself has a pretty decent scaler in it as well. If you attach a decent progressive scan player to the screen via component, the picture you get will be very good - I found it's at least as good as the picture from the powerbook playing a DVD.

      The one drawback for using a mac mini on this display is that you won't have anywhere close to the horsepower needed to play any HD content. I doubt the mini is capable of playing 1080i MPEG2 TS much less H.264 at 720p or 1080p. My powerbook is a 1.4ghz G4 like the mini though, and I have an HDV camcorder that I can get 1080i MPEG2 TS from, so if you want to know the results of my testing on the mac's ability to do MPEG2 HD, drop me a line.
        • Upon investigation, I found that the powerbook and probably the mini also are capable of MPEG2 1920x1080 ... probably because the graphics cards can accelerate the decoding. They aren't particularly fast enough to do deinterlacing though, so you'll have to rely on the monitor to do that part. ATI has H.264 acceleration in their next chipset, but it's still up in the air as to whether or not current ATI chipsets will get any H264 accleleration or whether or not quicktime will end up taking advantage of it.

          I

  • Small, but not water proof (Score:4, Insightful)

    by intmainvoid (109559) on Sunday July 31 2005, @11:55AM (#13208249)
    The kitchen strikes me as somewhere where there's often water, and from my limited experience with water and computers, that might not be a good thing! Of course a Mini is bordering on being cheap enough to be disposable...

    • Solution (Score:4, Funny)

      by AtariAmarok (451306) on Sunday July 31 2005, @12:00PM (#13208284)
      The solution is to make sure that the MacMini has Aqua pre-installed. You have to do it the proper way with the installation disc. Merely splashing it on the case will cause trouble.

  • Mac Mini Built Into Wall (Score:5, Funny)

    by $RANDOMLUSER (804576) on Sunday July 31 2005, @11:56AM (#13208252)
    That's nothing - I used to use a VAX 9000 as a wall. And a furnace.
  • What about heat? [No, I am still not using a Mac, so I do not know what kind of temperature a Mac mini produces, but I doubt it keeps cool if no cold air is avalible.]
  • Outputting very little heat, virtually no noise, Half decent preformance, full services for file sharing, web services, ftp services, dns sevices, the entire works.. One of these babies could sit in everyone's room, in every house. Its no wonder they are popular. I am surprised that more people havent done unique and clever things with there mac minis.
      • I more or less view it as the internet workstation. It can sit in mothers room, and have a nice LCD flat screen monitor and be small and out of the way. The traditional computer desk with its bulk and size needs not be. It can easily fit on the side end table by the couch with its wireless keyboard and mouse.

        pickup a big enough LCD monitor and it could easily be your wireless multimedia center for TV, dvd movies, and internet surfing in the living room.

        Did it mention the power consumption of the entire unit

  • Goatse warning!!!!! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Spackler (223562) on Sunday July 31 2005, @11:59AM (#13208273) Journal
    His next project involved building it into another spot. That is why the page could not be displayed!

  • Something tells me this is a step backward.

  • Somebody call the fire department (Score:3, Funny)

    by artemis67 (93453) on Sunday July 31 2005, @12:02PM (#13208296) Homepage
    Apparently, he built his webserver into the wall as well, and his house in on fire.
  • Here's another nice use of a mac mini, it's even easier to install:

    http://www.w3sh.com/archives/2005/05/enfin_un_bon_ us.html [w3sh.com]
  • I put the thing in the friggin' silverware drawer.

    Problem solved! Next!

  • Why not just buy an iMac? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sdpinpdx (66786) <sdp&spamcop,net> on Sunday July 31 2005, @12:33PM (#13208467) Journal
    Didn't the current iMac design appear before or at the same time as the mini? Seems like that's exactly what he was looking for.

    He could have taped one of the firewire TV tuners to the back of it for the TV function (or streamed it over the LAN from some location with better reception than the kitchen).

  • Awful website. (Score:3, Informative)

    by blanks (108019) on Sunday July 31 2005, @01:16PM (#13208710) Homepage Journal

    Not only do they claim that the site is not compatible with IE (which renders it fine) But they claim that the website is w3 compliant.

    After the page loads I get a nice JavaScript error, and also decided to check the w3 validator [w3.org] and found 24 errors, not making the website compliant.

    If your going to complain about " standard compliant browsers" you should at least make your site compliant to THE standards you claim to enforce.

  • For the love of God Montressor!! (Score:3, Funny)

    by OneDeeTenTee (780300) on Sunday July 31 2005, @01:28PM (#13208782)
    Yes, for the love of God.
  • using a short patch lead on show like that seems totally braindead to me when he could just take the incoming network cable straight to the mac

    he used a bus powered hub for all the USB ports, frankly i'm surprised he made the dvd drive work on that at all and he himself admitted that it didn't work on the usb hub with the new led connected.

    also he doesn't mention the power of the heater but i wonder if he has thought about the rating of the wall socket that he has connected everything to. some heaters basically use up the entire rating of a standard 13A socket.

  • What makes it all very funny... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Cloud K (125581) on Sunday July 31 2005, @05:00PM (#13209890) Homepage
    - That he was so obsessed with the goal of hiding a computer in a wall that he went out and bought a computer that's so small there's absolutely no point in hiding it in the wall. And to make matters funnier, he didn't make the CD drive accessible and had to buy an external one... about the same size as a Mac Mini and a lot uglier.

    - This quote: "Since the Mac is designed in america, it's most convenient to measure it in their units, Imperial units, goodness knows why they can't use SI units like the rest of the world, probably their bias against the french."
    (Hahaha. He has a point.)

    - This picture: http://www.caffeine-junkies.com/images/articles/ik itchen/cut5.jpg [caffeine-junkies.com]
    Just screams out 'M-m-m-mac mini!'
    He should've scrawled labels on it with black marker pen...

    - The whole "I'm so cool, I own a computer made by Apple Macintosh" (it's Apple, retard), "and I openly show how much I hate IE" (annoying) and "Let's deliberately get to a stage where I have to test it's still working as an excuse to show an Apple desktop" thing he has going.

    - This unnecessary comment: "NOTE FOR LAYMEN: it's imperitive that the wires for the LED are kept the same way around, because an LED is just that, a DIODE, and thus it will only work if the current is going one way."
    Well, no shit Sherlock! I'm glad your university degree taught you *something*. Personally I learned that in Science class at about age 12.

    - The excessive use of CAT5 for everything just to look cool to a Slashdot audience. Ironically, ends up looking a complete pratt by using a patch cable *outside* of the wall. I have no words!

    - At the end of the day, all he did was plonk the Mini on the floor and create a wall-mounted port replicator, and even end up wasting money on an external optical drive!

    Got to love it. You have to be sorry for him, he's obviously just trying to look cool. He's also fallen for the old pitfall of obsessing so much about solving a challenge that didn't even exist, he ended up creating more problems and overcomplicating the whole thing. But it's so funny.
    • That sort of things irritate me. Sure, I'm all about standards compliance, but there's no need to make it a religion as this asshat has. There is NO need whatsoever to interrupt a user and lecture him for using an 'inferior' browser.

      Yay, your code is standards compliant. Good for you. If you're that worried about complaining IE users, you obviously don't know how to code a standards-compliant website that doesn't break non-compliant browsers. So good of you to publicly reveal your web programming short

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