Hendersonhome Chronicles

Sometimes, God gives me a deep and wonderful spiritual insight.  When this occurs, I love to write a post about it to share with everyone, hoping that someone will be blessed and have a closer walk with Christ.

This isn’t one of those posts.

I’m starting a series that will chronicle my attempt to create the Henderson Cinema/Arcade/Presentation Center.  The goal is to utilize our basement so that it can be an enjoyable space for watching movies and playing games, as well as watching video presentations for small groups.  One condition of this is that I want to make as few modifications to the walls and ceiling of the basement as possible.  Given my track record for home improvements, that ‘s best for everyone involved.  Another is that the projector will be easily moveable, so that we can use it elsewhere.

The first stage of this project involves three tasks:

• Build a screen.  This will be a wall-mounted 16:9 screen, probably 7.5′ x 4.5′.
• Build speaker stands.  I’ve got a 2.1 sound system, which will be fine until I’m ready to install a surround-sound system.  However, I need some way to elevate the two bookshelf speakers I will be using.
• Create an extension cord for the projector.  I want the video sources off to the side of the room, but the projector will need to be centered in front of the screen.  This will require a 15-pin extension cord for the video signal.  I would like the cable to be about 20 feet long.

One more condition: I want to do this with as little expense as possible, within reason.

This could very well be a comedy of errors, considering that:

• I never took shop in high school.  Let’s just say that working with wood is always a fresh journey for me.
• The number of power tools I own can be counted on one hand.

However, I have some advantages:

• I have all five fingers on that hand used to count power tools, unlike this guy:
  
• I have the Internet. I have found two or three plans for the screen, and one for the extension cord.  The speaker pedestals will be something I dreamed up.
• Room.  We’re not using the basement for anything else (except storage), so I have a lot of flexibility in projector placement.  I hope to take this:
  

  The future site of the Henderson Cineplex.

  and turn it into…something else.

The Adventure Begins…

I started with the last item first, for some reason.  I think it was a confidence-building thing.

As I said, I want to locate the video sources at least ten feet away from the project, and have some extra length for maneuvering.  I found steps here to use a Cat5 cable to make a VGA cable.  I have a 100-foot Cat5 cable that I haven’t been using, so I sacrificed about 20 feet of it for the sake of the cause.  After slicing off the ends of the cable, I was left with this:

Man, that's a lot of wires.

Following the diagrams in the above link I soldered the colored wires into their appropriate sockets on the 15-pin connectors.  I deviated from the plans a bit; instead of using two male connectors, I used a male & female connector, essentially making an extension cable.  The reason for this is that I plan on having two video sources: my XBox 360 and a PC.  The XBox 360 will be for games and DVDs; the PC will be for other streaming media.  I’ll switch between the two using a KVM switch.

The soldering proved to less tricky that I imagined.  For the past 15 years or so, I would occasionally see a project that involved soldering, and I would get the itch to make something.  In high school, I made a guitar amplifier for a physics project, and loved the experience.  My last experience with soldering involved putting a larger speaker into a different amplifier.  Let’s just say that the end result included smoke, and a ruined amp.

After purchasing the necessary components from Radio Shack, I set to work soldering wires to connectors.  The first three or so took much longer than I expected.  Like a lot of small motor skill activities, it takes a little while to find the right pattern.  Using a C-clamp to hold the VGA connector helped dramatically, and I remembered that it’s easier to melt the solder into the wire, then melt it again to the connection.  A little while later, I behold my creation:

It's ugly, but it works...honest.

I tested the cable using an old computer and monitor, and was astounded that it worked.  I then added the hoods for the finishing touch:

20+ feet of VGA goodness

Next up: Building the screen!