This post is a bit off the beaten path compared to other posts about the Barkyard itself. Why a post about the office? We’re refitting “Data Central”, the heart of Barkyard designs, gadgets, and posting of course! Just about everything associated with the Barkyard starts here in Data Central. An idea starts here and grows here. Whether it’s online research or Arduino coding, it all starts here.

What used to be drawn up with pencil and paper is now captured electronically, and has been for years now, decades even. And over those years, the applications used have changed, many so old they are no longer supported by modern operating systems. For example, while my favorite Windows 95/98 programs continued to run on Windows XP, they absolutely will not run on Windows 10 or 11.

What does all this computer speak have to do with refitting the office? Everything. Within reach of my office chair are two servers and three laptops. The two servers share physical keyboard, mouse, display, and USB devices via a KVM switch. While not really necessary, it certainly comes in handy when we can’t reach the Internet for whatever reason, when I can’t use Chrome Remote Desktop to access the other server.

Computers Are Great… When They Work!

These posts are created on the new computer, with a brief hiatus while the failed boot drive was replaced. Short version is just before the year warranty ran out, the 2TB SSD failed miserably and the computer refused to boot. I put in a warranty claim, then waited months before I was finally able to talk to someone who cared, and he express shipped a replacement SSD to me.

What’s the kicker? By the time the normal warranty chain played out, they ended up sending me another replacement SSD a few weeks later! As much as I complained about their cumbersome and exasperating support process, or lack thereof, it serves as a striking example of how not to do things. But it paid off for me in the end! I’m still chuckling about it.

Whether designing a new gadget or coding a new Arduino sketch or writing a new post or just plain research for the Barkyard, computers are a vital part of it. The older server provides large data storage and backup, both for applications and data. The new server is optimized to compose and render videos, perform CAD/CAM, and provide enough local storage to save all the collective research.

A Bit of History

There are two work cells, one devoted to personal servers, the other a gadget work cell “around the corner” from the first, now shared with work computing. That’s where the laptops come into play. When I started back to work more than two years ago, I needed another computer work space, separate from my personal computing space, for the work laptop and its associated devices and monitors.

The original gadget workspace was a set of cabinets, one 42″ and one 36″, that supported a ¾” cabinet grade plywood top. The 42″ cabinet forms an “L” with two more 36″ cabinets along the back wall facing the Barkyard. All in all, it’s a Galley style arrangement when the computer desk is added along the opposite wall.

I wasn’t pleased I had to share my gadget assembly and testing area with my work computing. Work by day and projects by night? Sounds good until there’s a project laid out that can’t be put “back in the box” the next morning when booting the computer and getting back to work. At least it pays the bills.

Original Rework

The makeshift computer work cell using the original 42″ cabinet was not optimized for computing. For that matter, it wasn’t meant for computing at all. The cabinet sat on the floor, which runs downhill toward the back wall. Originally this was the sleeping porch, now closed in and under air. In fact, it has it’s own dedicated split unit now to handle all the heat those computers and printers throw off. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

About the only thing that can be said is it’s level so things don’t roll off it. It’s home to all sorts of electronics and parts assortments and Arduino kits, haphazardly arranged on a custom shelf arrangement that was previously meant to store CD jewel cases. Thankfully the top shelf is just wide enough to hold up another set of monitors.

It doesn’t take long to realize that not only is it not optimized for computing, it’s in no way ergonomic either. The pain in my back, through my hip, and down the side of my leg is telling me something has to change. Assuming it’s constantly fighting that tendency to roll downhill since the pain is on that side. Of course, having to keep my feet up in that cabinet probably doesn’t help.

That 42″ cabinet has to go. Go where? Out. It doesn’t matter where. But that doesn’t help fix the downhill slope of the floor. The plan is to lay down a 4×4 sheet of ¾” plywood, strategically supported to keep it level. The only problem is that 36″ cabinet, but there’s nowhere for it to go. Now what? There’s just enough space to push those other 36″ cabinets along the back wall far enough to spin that 36″ cabinet around and inline with the other two.

Long story short, the floor is now a level sheet of plywood with a nice rug to cover it and the gadget workspace is now a dedicated counter supported by a set of custom brackets. Custom brackets that used to support my HO scale layout at the old house, sitting in the garage waiting to be useful again nearly as long as we’ve lived here.

The Problem

Well, there’s more than one problem, but the main problem now is the haphazard arrangement of everything in relation to everything else. There are five 27″ monitors, and no two sets of them are at the same height. The two monitors dedicated to personal computing are at just the right height off the desk, sitting atop its “Pidgeon hole” cabinet, roughly 9″ at the base. The middle of the screen is just at eye level. No neck strain.

The base of the single monitor dedicated to the surveillance system sits right on the gadget counter, but that sits about 3″ lower than the desk, about 12″ lower than the first set of monitors. And even though that counter is lower, the custom shelf arrangement holds the base of the two monitors dedicated to the work laptop at a good 6″ – 7″ higher than the personal computing set.

As if that isn’t goofy enough, the counter isn’t long enough to complete the “L” with the desk, so there’s a gaping 20″ chasm between the wall and the edge of the counter. That monitor for the surveillance system teeters precariously over the edge and the USB hub sitting next to it is always falling into the abyss. What should be a Galley style arrangement isn’t. The issue is the metal and glass shelving unit that promised to be more useful than it turned out to be. All it does is collect dust and it needs to go away too.

Another problem is the loss of storage space with the loss of that 42″ cabinet. To that end a drawer was added under the counter and between the custom brackets. But because it wasn’t well thought out when installed originally, a compromise was made. More like a complex set of pieces were needed to force the drawer and slides to fit, even after it was cut down from its original wider size. Between that and constantly banging my knees against it, that will need to be addressed as well.

The Solution

The solution to these problems and more is a refit. That is to say a retrofit to re-fit everything together in a more purposeful, organized fashion. I’ve been updating my office layout in SketchUp, mainly to try some “what ifs” without having to tear everything apart to test fit ideas. It definitely helped me figure out where that 42″ cabinet would fit, along with the rest of everything else.

I’m not going to lie. Part of that effort was to catalog and look at some “what ifs” for placing the old HO scale layout sections in a bookshelf layout arrangement, fitting and reusing the various shapes and pieces of ½” plywood sub base that’s been waiting to become useful again along with those custom brackets. But that’s on hold for now. More pressing matters to address.

More pressing matters like continually deteriorating infrastructure and soon to be installed fiber service. That’s right, it’s finally here. Nearly twenty years after we were originally promised fiber at the old house, and by the same company no less! It’s probably a good thing I didn’t know that until their trucks showed up out front or I would have told them to pound sand! But that’s another story for another time.

Not that we were unhappy with our service provider, 250MB per second download speeds are nothing to sneeze at, but we’re lucky to get 10MB – 12MB per second upload speeds. The one and only time we tried to go live failed miserably because of those limited upload speeds. With fiber we can speed less and get more, like 1GB per second down and up! In fact, we can cut our costs further by going with the 500MB per second plan.

The Refit

That’s the motivation for the refit, and the motivation to get the refit done now, before they come to install the fiber. So what exactly is the refit? Good question. Glad you asked. To boil it down into its most condensed form, it’s slicing up a 4×8 sheet of ¾” furniture grade plywood into dedicated shelving that solves all the disparities already listed.

• A new counter section that not only fills the missing gap, but also adjusts the height and solves the constant knee banging.
• A new shelf to align all the monitors at the same eye level height along with increased storage space.
• A new shelf along the wall over the personal computing and surveillance system monitors for more storage space.

It begins with the shelf over the monitors so there’s someplace to put the Gramazon, and the track and rail cars sitting on top of the work monitors, and anything else that needs a temporary home while fitting the new counter and the other shelf. The shelves are cut 12″ deep for the 8′ length of the sheet. That leaves the remaining 24″ for the new counter. All that remains is fitting to length and capping with screen mold for a clean, finished look.

Originally I was going to make custom wooden brackets for the shelves but the more pressing need to finish before the fiber is installed put an end to that idea. Looking at various options online, I came across the “Hidden L” arrangement. Essentially a thick, flat piece of metal with an attached mounting bracket at a right angle that is partially hidden by the shelf it supports. My only concern is how much they’ll sag under load.

The Rethink

The shelf for over the monitors is shortened to 6′ to fit the available space between the wall and the door frame. Then the screen mold is glued and brad nailed into place. Finally the piece is sanded smooth and ready for placement. After attaching the brackets to the wall at every stud, 16″ on center, the shelf is set in place. I can pull the shelf down at least ½” applying a lot of force. Even though they’re rated for 100#, I imagine I could bend or break the brackets if I hung my full weight on them.

I’m pleased with the fitment and the resilience of the brackets but soon realize I forgot to cut the angled notch out of the corner for cord relief. No matter, there’s enough clearance on either end that only the fattest power cord wouldn’t fit. Considering the only power cord so far is for the amazon dot and it could fit in the space between the bracket mount and the back edge of the shelf, roughly 0.2″ thick, it’s not a big deal.

The office isn’t quite 8′ wide, roughly 90½” from the inside wall to the outside wall. The original plan was to place the counter from wall to wall with those 36″ cabinets lifted and levelled to match, mainly to allow access to the floor plywood to rework the levelling supports beneath it to firm things up. Best laid plans…

After seeing how the wooden bracket that supports the 3D printer shelf would interfere with the back runner on the cabinet and how much trouble it was trying to maneuver the new counter into place, the plan to make everything level was quickly abandoned. Cutting to fit wall to wall turns out to be a bad idea, an awful idea in fact.

After multiple back and forth trips to trim the length it’s still a bear to get the thing maneuvered into position. Short of nearly standing the thing up just so the corners clear when rotating it into place, it’s nearly impossible to clear what used to be the porch banister, still a major structure on that wall. Add to that the overhang sagging on either side of the custom brackets and we need a new plan.

The Replan

More like we need a replan. We can add another one of those custom brackets on the end by the desk, but we’re out of luck on the end over the 36″ cabinet. The decision is made. The counter will be cut to fit up to but not cover the 36″ cabinet. That is to say we’ll remove 24″ from the 90½” length. We’ll also add that third custom bracket near the inside wall to support the sag on that end.

Next step is to rework the mounts for the drawer slides. Starting with a 1×4 doesn’t give enough clearance for the contents of the drawer. The big offender is the mixer board, stashed there until needed. The idea is to leave it connected and just pull out the drawer when we want to use it. Switching to 1x6s. My knee aren’t smashing into the drawer anymore, just the corners of those 1x6s!

The new shelf for the other monitors is cut to fit wall to wall, which is still a bad idea. After multiple back and forth trips to trim the length it finally fits. The biggest issue this time is it deviates from the plan and there’s not quite enough space for the surveillance system monitor in its planned position.

The picture above shows the halfway point so to speak. This is the work laptop setup. On the left in the foreground, glowing green, is the new power supply for the audio amplifier. Behind that is the surveillance system, it’s PoE ethernet switch for the cameras, and the battery backup (UPS) for those and the amp. The monitors and the laptop itself have their own dedicated battery backup (off screen to the right).

The keyboard and mouse sit atop a piece of 1×6 that spans the front of the drawer and acts as a keyboard shelf. The dedicated microphone and audio amplifier for the associated speakers is visible on the right, left speaker visible on shelf to left. The surveillance system monitor has been relocated to the right side of the work monitors. Regardless of its placement, the work monitors must shift one direction or the other. Time to go back to plan.

The original plan calls for a “round the corner” fitment for the shelf on the left end, pretty much where the left speaker and Gramazon are sitting. What’s a Gramazon? Good question. Glad you asked. See that blue thing there that looks like a gramophone? The base contains my Amazon Dot 3 and the gramophone part guides sound to and from it. It’s one of the first 3D prints I made, starting with one for Ann’s Dot 2.

Time’s Up

Because they had to locate the utilities, pull the permits, and trench in the new fiber before they could connect us, it gave us a bit of a reprieve of maybe a week or so. The picture above shows we’re still working on getting the refit finished. It didn’t stop the installation or even slow it down. Having to go through three different fiber modems set us back more than our refit, still in progress, but at least they figured out what was wrong with their system and fixed it.

You can see the fiber modem/router in the picture above, white case with a green light. I dressed out the ethernet cables from the surveillance cameras using short lengths of Velcro® looped around on itself, and the excess length coiled beneath the fiber modem. To the right of that and under the square chunk of shelf is the surveillance system (NVR) and the PoE switch to manage all the connections.

At least this time I remembered to cut the cable relief in the back corner of the shelf. Still missing is the planned angled cut on the front corner facing out of the picture. The plan called for an 18″ square piece with a 6″ triangular relief cut from the front corner. That plan was modified to avoid having to move the shelf bracket. So 16½” it is. Hopefully that will provide enough space for the surveillance system monitor to sit above it.

Installation Finished

Both the fiber modem and office refit are installed and we’re happy with both. It certainly took some doing though. What started with dropping the Internet connection a few times a day turned into swapping modems twice, each time getting worse, not better. The last attempt and we had maybe ten minutes of connection before dropping again. Totally unacceptable! Now I’m wondering if we haven’t allowed the same company to totally screw up our Internet once again.

Both Ann and I have 100% remote jobs that require a reliable Internet connection. At least Ann has an Air Card supplied with her work laptop. Me? Not so much. I had to tether through my phone until they fixed it! They had to replace some “filter” downtown at the office just blocks away from us. This played out over the course of a week or more.

I must admit, now that it’s working reliably, 540MB per second speeds both down and up is really much better than we had before. Maybe we’ll try one of those livestreams again to really test it out. It certainly was a distraction from more pressing issues, not to mention the extra stress of having to deal with it at all. Now back to the matter at hand, the refit.

A place for everything and everything in its place is the ultimate goal for the refit now that the new counter and shelves are installed. Even the idea of hanging the battery backups from the underside of the monitor shelf panned out. Most of the project “pencil boxes” are back where they sat on the counter, but all the parts kits and such are still sitting in a large tub in the corner of the office, their place yet to be determined.

The picture shows one of the benefits of having a second computer space for laptops. That’s my personal laptop, but it can share the same docking station that came with my work laptop. Convenient. Very convenient. Both are ThinkPads, but my personal one has the super sized screen, which is why it’s folded down to fit on the counter. I do like having three screens for sure.

As an aside, the Windows 11 driver for the CH340 serial controller doesn’t work, but the Windows 10 version does. You’ll never guess what’s running on the new computer. Good thing I can connect the laptop and have it talk to the Arduinos that use that CH340 chip! In fact, that’s pretty much what’s going on in the picture.

New Gadgets

Speaking of Arduinos, the refit inspired a new gadget. A new lighting gadget. You can see the first cut at it above running the “Christmas Tru-Tone™” effect. A little setup first might help. The monitors aren’t the only things sitting on the desk “Pidgeon hole” cabinet. Behind the monitors at each end of the desk are a set of lamps. Those lamps have Amazon Alexa compatible smart plugs attached so I can say, “Alexa, turn on Office 1” and the lamp on the left will light.

Convenient. Much more convenient than having to run the lamp cord by hand just to find the inline switch every time I want to turn one on or off. Unfortunately, the new shelf over the monitors on the desk blocks the light from the lamps. What used to illuminate the white ceiling and cast light throughout the office now provides just a backlight to the monitors. An unwanted backlight. We need something to replace the light we lost.

Inspired by my latest lighting adventures for controlling the lithophanes, I decided to dig out those LED strip corner frames I bought years ago to use for the train station lighting. The train station we no longer have, lost when we removed the raised bed planters along the patio. Anyway, the idea is to place the corner frame along the back of the shelf over the monitors, facing toward the ceiling and out into the office.

Those corner frames have a face at 45º to either side, meant for the LED strip to stick to, and a snap in diffuser over top of it all. While I didn’t really need the scheduling additions from the lithophane lighting sketch, I did want all the updates and bug fixes that came with it. I also expanded the “build from config” feature to get us closer to not having to create a dedicated HTML page just to control all the different lighting arrangements.

I’ll save all the exciting details for a separate post. Suffice it to say that it took some doing, both in hardware and software. The end product does what I want, provide a soft backlit atmosphere for the office, perfect to see what you’re doing but not so bright that I have to squint. This picture shows the shelf over the monitors. You can also see the split unit and the Gramazon on the right.

Finishing Touches

If anything remains to be done it would be to apply a finish to the new shelving. I think I’ll save that for when I have a week off of work and can take the counter and monitor shelf offline long enough to stain and finish them. I can take down the shelf over the monitors pretty much anytime I want, but I’ll probably wait and do them all at once. Who knows? Maybe I’ll get motivated to stain, finish, and level those 36″ cabinets too!

I may even break this into two parts, seems kind of long winded, even to me. Let me know what you think in the comments.