Command Center/Dispatch Console Build
- Thread starter TJX400
- Start date
Osprey1163
Member
Now that's tasteful without being gaudy!! Color me jealous.I recently bought a new desk for my radio room to replace the previous countertop & drawers. When I was searching for the new desk, I had some requirements in mind... I needed it to be sit/stand, L shaped or wraparound, and be humongous enough to fit my monitors, radios, both PCs and occasionally a laptop or two. Something that fits these requirements is very difficult to find. I eventually landed on the Foundry Bench from VersaDesk. It was pricey. Pricey, but you get what you pay for. This beast is built on a steel powder coated frame, and topped with natural bamboo. It also features 3 heavy duty actuators that can lift up to 450 pounds (or so the company claims).
I ordered it from VersaDesk, got an email from them 2 days later giving me a delivery date of 22 days in the future. It ended up shipping 35 days later, and arriving after another 8 days. So, all in, from clicking order to being delivered, the process took a total of 45 days. My assumption is that they had to manufacture everything before shipping, which makes sense given the timeline. It was shipped from their facility in Los Angeles, CA to my residence in Central VA.
The parts for the desk arrived in several boxes, the actual parts were wrapped in lots of saran type plastic wrap, but there was no damage visible. They included all required hardware with the exception of a wrench for the screws to assemble the legs, but I had one available to use. From start to finish, it took me about 2.5 - 3 hours to put the desk itself together. It probably should've been a two person job, but I made it work by myself. I'd put the difficulty level about the same as any furniture from Ikea, really all it requires is following the directions that come with it & some motivation. Just time consuming.
Here's a photo of the desk once I'd finished putting it together:
Next thing to do was install all of the stuff that belongs on the desk. I don't quite remember my exact process when I did this, I just turned on some music and got to work. Lots of moving pieces. Here is a photo (mostly of figuring out how to get the CH721 mounted to look good) that I took along the way:
This part of the process took quite some time. I had to run wires for the basic stuff; computer power, keyboard, DisplayPort & HDMI for monitors, etc. It got a bit challenging when it came to the radios, though. Obviously, each radio requires (at least) power, coax, speaker, and data (for scanners). The APX/XTL & XG75M also require ignition sense (depending on programming). For the DC power to the APX/XTL/XG, I ordered a fuse block off of Amazon, connected it to my power supply, and it worked absolute wonders. I have one in my truck for my mobiles, and decided it'd be beneficial in this setup as well. It was.
Once I got everything setup, I hid the wires as best as possible, and tied them into groups with cable ties & zip ties. I have been absolutely thrilled with the final result...
I threw in a touch of RGB for some flare, as you have seen. It makes the environment feel much more dynamic, I'm able to control the colors, patterns, etc with an app on my phone. All of the radios are tied into the radio PC (far left) where many of them are hosts for Broadcastify feeds. The APX/XTL/XG radios use a cable I fabricated for each to send RX audio to the PC via 3.5mm audio jacks.
Once the audio cables get to the radio PC, the feed hosts go to RadioFeed first, and then VoiceMeeter. Voicemeeter then sends the radio audio over the LAN to my gaming desktop. The Elgato Stream Deck in the photos below is linked to VoiceMeeter on the gaming PC and it mutes/unmutes/volume controls all of those radios. Each radio has it's own button on the Stream Deck to mute/unmute, and then there's a master mute button which mutes all radio traffic.
The second page of the Stream Deck is a bunch of various alert tones which are being used for a project I'm working on. You may have noticed that in the below under-desk shot there is a small knob. This knob adjusts the volume for both my headphones and desktop speakers. Radio audio can be sent to the speakers seen under the desk and/or the computer speakers, depending on what I need. I installed the radio speakers (even though they're all capable of using the desktop speakers) to help differentiate which radio is talking if it gets busy.
The radio PC also runs 2 instances of ProScan for the BCD996P2 and SDS200; Unitrunker V2 & SDRTrunk which use 7 RTL-SDR tuners. The SDRTrunk application alone hosts 7 Broadcastify audio feeds & 4 Calls Platform nodes, Unitrunker feeds into Trunking Recorder which hosts another calls platform.
All in all, it took me approximately 14 hours to put everything together, run wires, etc. Obviously, not everything is perfect, for example the power strips are just sitting on the floor right now, but LTTStore is supposed to come out with some magnetic mounts to fix that at some point soon. I'm intending on getting some cable spines for the cables going from the top of the desk to the base, and I'd ideally like to mount the PCs to brackets underneath the desk, but the gaming PC cost me too much money not to display on top. Ideally throughout the next few months I'd like to add some sound treatment & prints of various photos/artwork to the walls in the room, but for now, this will do. I was also very much debating taking my XG100M & CH100 setup out of my truck and putting it here, but it's versatility is best in the mobile application.
From left to right on the desk, here's a list of radios displayed:
Harris XG100P (soon to be XL200P)
Uniden BCD996P2
Motorola XTL5000 O5
Motorola APX7500 E5
Motorola XTL5000 O5
Uniden SDS200
Motorola APX8000XE
The computers displayed (from left to right)
1. Generic HP PC:
- AMD Ryzen 5 5600G
- 12GB DDR4 RAM
- Integrated graphics w/ CPU
2. Dell Latitude 14 Rugged 5404
3. Apple M2 Macbook Pro
4. HP Omen 40L
- Intel Core i9-12900K
- 32GB DDR4 RAM
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX3080
- 1TB HDD
- 1TB SSD
This build required many months of planning and quite a bit of cash to make possible. I am thrilled with the result.
Please leave any comments/questions/ideas that you might have. I am an endless pit of ideas for radio and computer stuff, I enjoy nothing more than brainstorming & building projects like this!
Stream Deck Opens Applications and Controls them. It has nothing to do with external radios
TJX400
Member
Thanks!
TJX400
Member
Yeah man I get it lol, was going for a 80s synth wave look to diversify from the classic ham shack look. Like I said all the lights & their patterns are programmable from the app on my phone so I change it depending on what I'm doing. Not for everyone, certainly understand
TJX400
Member
Yep, thanks guys!
I used the "RX FILT AUDIO" pin on the rear J2 connector from the XTLs/APX/XG, tied it to a 3.5mm audio jack, and plugged each into 3.5mm to USB into the radio PC so each radio has it's own dedicated input. It goes from the radio PC to my gaming desktop via VoiceMeeter's VBAN feature, and I use the VoiceMeeter plugin for the StreamDeck on my gaming desktop to adjust volume and mute/unmute. If I want to use the radio's actual external speaker, I still have to use the knob on the radio. The StreamDeck basically allows me to turn specific radio audio on/off with the press of a button, and then I can flip it between my headphones & desktop speakers really easily too. Lots of moving pieces software wise for sure.
Fantastic build on the gaming layout alone and then you crushed it with sweet radios on top of that! Nicely done. I will definitely be referencing this during my next build.
I just want your background on your monitor ! Love fire towers. Was out in VA yesterday looking for a couple.
TJX400
Member
Thanks! I use wallpaper engine, so it has some animations in it too. Just searched for fire tower I believe
TJX400
Member
Yeah, my house had a J pole from a satellite dish that I removed (cause who still uses satellite when you have good internet), so I mounted the Omni X & Diamond antenna on it. Neither of them are used for transmitting at this point, so I'm not worried about them being close together for now.
Wow. Aside from the perfect layout, I am really fascinated with the lighting. You've given me some new ideas for my ham/scanner desk layout (once I clean things up, of course...)
TJX400
Member
Thanks! There's still some tweaking I want to do with it, but it's good for now. I use Govee RGB exclusively. I love their app and their products are very cool.
Interesting! In fact, I ordered my Govee light bars right after I saw your photos and have them installed already! Good call.
Do you think you could put together a step-by-step-how- to guide! JK. Wow!
TJX400
Member
I was going to do a video, but too much work on top of a lot of existing work lol. Thanks for the kind words
I like how you are using StreamDeck to control audio muting.
I'm using a Zetron Model 27 8 Port Speaker Volume/Mute Controller, which is a 3U Rack Size.
In my new shack some time off, I will definitely look into Stream Deck.
I'm using a Zetron Model 27 8 Port Speaker Volume/Mute Controller, which is a 3U Rack Size.
In my new shack some time off, I will definitely look into Stream Deck.
Beautiful set up. Nice screen and desk configuration. Interesting sound control. Really good looking job.
Wow! That set up is just pure perfection, I'm floored! That's how you do a home shack alright. Thanks for sharing this!
TJX400
Member
Wanted to add an update to this thread... When I first posted it, I noted that I really wanted to clean up the cable management underneath the desk, because I had the power strips sitting on the floor. It caused a cluttered feel.
I've added a few things to the setup to help with this. I purchased these magnetic mounts on Amazon. I mounted them to the cable management boxes on the rear of the desk, so they can stick to the steel frame of the desk with magnets. I did the same with the power strips...
I initially did this with double sided Gorilla Tape, which worked for about 24 hours and then it fell off. No hate on the gorilla tape, in fact it's my favorite double sided tape, it just wasn't strong enough for this application.
If you look at the photos in the first post, you can see some coax and CAT5 cables hanging from my ceiling. I removed it in the edits of the photos so it didn't look so awful, but I was able to purchase a cable spine and clean up the look quite a bit. With how my attic is setup, it's not possible to easily drop them behind the wall and pop them out behind the desk.
Here's the floor under the desk after adding these magnetic mounts and cleaning up the cable management a bit, feels like a night and day difference to me...
I've added a few things to the setup to help with this. I purchased these magnetic mounts on Amazon. I mounted them to the cable management boxes on the rear of the desk, so they can stick to the steel frame of the desk with magnets. I did the same with the power strips...
I initially did this with double sided Gorilla Tape, which worked for about 24 hours and then it fell off. No hate on the gorilla tape, in fact it's my favorite double sided tape, it just wasn't strong enough for this application.
If you look at the photos in the first post, you can see some coax and CAT5 cables hanging from my ceiling. I removed it in the edits of the photos so it didn't look so awful, but I was able to purchase a cable spine and clean up the look quite a bit. With how my attic is setup, it's not possible to easily drop them behind the wall and pop them out behind the desk.
Here's the floor under the desk after adding these magnetic mounts and cleaning up the cable management a bit, feels like a night and day difference to me...
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