Mac Mini in the Kitchen ... thoughts?

jpenningtonjpennington
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
My girlfriend wants a TV in the kitchen, I said ok. I should be going to the store, buying an LCD TV and a mount and installing it, but no. I want to make it better. A DVD player (which we would have) is bigger than a mac mini, so I can't get yelled at about taking up too much space.



What do yall think about a 15" Samsung 710MP wallmount with a swinging arm connected to cable and a dual-core mac-mini? I could connect an external hard drive to it store movies/music on, we could have a nice little media center mac right in the kitchen.



Any suggestions? Or any "this is a terrible idea" 's?
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 21
    rara Posts: 623member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by jpennington

    My girlfriend wants a TV in the kitchen, I said ok. I should be going to the store, buying an LCD TV and a mount and installing it, but no. I want to make it better. A DVD player (which we would have) is bigger than a mac mini, so I can't get yelled at about taking up too much space.



    What do yall think about a 15" Samsung 710MP wallmount with a swinging arm connected to cable and a dual-core mac-mini? I could connect an external hard drive to it store movies/music on, we could have a nice little media center mac right in the kitchen.



    Any suggestions? Or any "this is a terrible idea" 's?



    You could get an iMac G5 and wall mount it.
  • Reply 2 of 21
    jpenningtonjpennington Posts: 476member
    I considered that, but the intel iMac with Frontrow cannot be wallmounted yet. Also, I planned on using the built in tv-tuner in the samsung monitor for TV. If I used the iMac I would have to eyetv or something to watch television.
  • Reply 3 of 21
    cosmonutcosmonut Posts: 4,872member
    How much time do you spend in the kitchen?!?!
  • Reply 4 of 21
    mzaslovemzaslove Posts: 519member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by jpennington

    I considered that, but the intel iMac with Frontrow cannot be wallmounted yet. Also, I planned on using the built in tv-tuner in the samsung monitor for TV. If I used the iMac I would have to eyetv or something to watch television.



    I think using the mini and screen is a great idea. Let me know how it goes, and I may follow suit. I always have the TV, or tunes going when I'm cooking, and with Bonjour, it could make life very easy.
  • Reply 5 of 21
    xoolxool Posts: 2,460member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by jpennington

    I considered that, but the intel iMac with Frontrow cannot be wallmounted yet. Also, I planned on using the built in tv-tuner in the samsung monitor for TV. If I used the iMac I would have to eyetv or something to watch television.



    HUH? I thought all these imacs supported standard VESA mounts.



    Maybe that got dropped when they revamped the iMacs to include FrontRow (G5 or Core Duo)? Sneaky sneaky.
  • Reply 6 of 21
    jpenningtonjpennington Posts: 476member
    Yep, from what I read all of the models with curved back (all late models) won't work. Something about how the "foot" is attached deep within the system, not just a couple screws on the back. I don't have an iMac so I'm not sure.



    I don't spend too much time in the kitchen, but my girlfriend does. Also for music.



    I was thinking mac mini so I could monitor the sites I run at night and watch stocks during the day. Obviously this is not needed and in my opinion is a waste of money. I consider a lot of things a waste of money though, nice cares, houses with guest rooms, etc., but I still buy them all, why not do this? Right?
  • Reply 7 of 21
    nebagakidnebagakid Posts: 2,692member
    uh, yeah, how much time do you spend in the kitchen?
  • Reply 8 of 21
    ebbyebby Posts: 3,110member
    I thought about doing this in my parents kitchen a while ago. I would get a cheap screen, a mini, and a EyeTV tuner. It would mostly be used for recipes, but TV would work too with just a few clicks.
  • Reply 9 of 21
    curiousuburbcuriousuburb Posts: 3,325member
    Some microwaves share the same 2.4GHz frequency with WiFi, so you may have poor Airport reception.



    And you'll probably want an iSkin for the mini's kb to keep it clean.

    Dunno if there's a similar option for mouse/remote.
  • Reply 10 of 21
    jpenningtonjpennington Posts: 476member
    The keyboard wouldn't be used much, the mouse either. Since the monitor would have a TV Tuner, I wouldn't need eyeTV. The DVD player and music could be controlled with frontrow, thus the remote.



    I mean, if money isn't an issue (which it is most of the the time, just not enough to stop me) why wouldn't I go with this?



    I thought about the airport issue, not only the microwave but the fact that the way the walls are set up there is hardly any wireless signal in the room anyway, which sucks. I have an Airport Express set up in the same place I would be running the cable from, so I thought about just running a network cable from there too. Since I am already having the run the cable, I might as well just use a wired connection.



    With that being said, back to the issue of no wireless in the kitchen. The line of site to one airport and blocked by two brick walls and the line of site to another airport is blocked by an air conditioner, water heater, and a wall of immense insulation to block out sounds, nothing getting through those walls. I could just running a cable into the kitchen and put another airport express. I was thinking though, since I would be putting a mac-mini in their I would just create an adhoc networking sharing the ethernet connection that was discussed earlier in this post. Now the question is, is there a way (probably via third party application) to create a secure network (wpa2) and make the ssid the same as my current network, thus extending roaming into the kitchen? I know I can create it and change the name to the current SSID, but to the best of my knowledge, I can't enable security. Anyone know how?
  • Reply 11 of 21
    andersanders Posts: 6,523member
    I am planning the same, just with an iBook.



    I wanted to go touch screen but it was too expensive.



    Someone made a "portable mini" with a eight inch screen, trackpad and mini mini keyboard for a very small amount of green. Try to look up their site. I think there is a lot of clues there (and post the link here since I can´t find it again )
  • Reply 12 of 21
    jpenningtonjpennington Posts: 476member
    Looks like this is it ...



    http://www.engadget.com/2006/02/09/t...mini-portable/



    and



    http://homepage.mac.com/peter_green/...ect/index.html



    Can you use a touch screen with a mac mini? That would be awesome, if so, what brand/model?
  • Reply 13 of 21
    jpenningtonjpennington Posts: 476member
    I was at CompUSA earlier to return something and saw a MacMini at the way to customer service (by on the way I mean I went out of my way to get to the apple section). I thought of this idea again. I did it tonight. I bought the mac mini and LCD arm at CompUSA. I went to Wal-mart to the getting the cables and such (only place open at 10:00). I saw the same monitor (almost the same, same brand, this one was actually this years model) I was going to get for $100 cheaper, so I picked it up there too. I didn't go with the original screen from an earlier post.



    It was actually easier than I thought. I live in a 1500sqft apartment (I'm a half student half full time worker), but for some reason wireless from my three airport WAPs doesn't get into my kitchen, so I had to run a network cable and a coax cable. I drilled holes at the bottom of one side of the wall and the top of the other and fished the lines through. They were both coming from my living room where I already have a coax amplifier splitter and a 100mbit switch. I used a signal selector and put one input direct cable and the other from the coax output of my tivo, so if my girlfriend wants to watch TV and no one is in the living room or she wants to watch the same thing, we can just flip the switch. We have a false ceiling in the kitchen, so I was able to run the power cable from the frig across the ceiling (along the metal beams) to the mini location. I set the mini up on top of some of the cabinets. It works great, you can't see it but you can still use the remote for FrontRow (it is the core duo mini).



    I only ran into one problem, the distance on the built in bluetooth, it doesn't work the well from the keyboard/mouse to the bar. I have a logitech 530 keyboard/mouse combo on my powermac that I brought in and tried, it worked great. I will pick up another set tomorrow.



    I will take pictures once I get the new keyboard/mouse in the morning.



    All in all, the project took about 4 hours (including snacking and drinking ). It cost about (all pricing are approximations after tax)



    Mac-Mini - $855

    Monitor (with builit in TV-tuner and D-Sub input) - $270

    LCD Arm - $100

    New Keyboard/Mouse - $110

    Misc. - $125



    Total - Around $1460



    MIsc. was just network cables, coax cable, more cable ties, VGA cable.
  • Reply 14 of 21
    cosmonutcosmonut Posts: 4,872member
    In...your...kitchen. Wow.
  • Reply 15 of 21
    auroraaurora Posts: 1,142member
    Why not? we have a Mini in our kitchen only i should have thought about the TV tuner in the LCD display before buying. Good idea.
  • Reply 16 of 21
    jeffdmjeffdm Posts: 12,951member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Xool

    HUH? I thought all these imacs supported standard VESA mounts.



    Maybe that got dropped when they revamped the iMacs to include FrontRow (G5 or Core Duo)? Sneaky sneaky.



    IIRC, rev. A iMac G5 had an available VESA mount, you pop off the back plate and swap the stand for a VESA mount. That good idea was done away with rev, B and Core Duos, probably because it was too good of an idea. In the same way, the newer iMacs are a lot more inconvenient to upgrade and maintain too, which is a bummer.
  • Reply 17 of 21
    jpenningtonjpennington Posts: 476member
    Heres the pictures





















  • Reply 18 of 21
    mynameheremynamehere Posts: 560member
    nice. very nice.
  • Reply 19 of 21
    stuffnjunkstuffnjunk Posts: 23member
    Thanks for sharing the pictures...i was curious to see what your set-up looked like...nice
  • Reply 20 of 21
    xoolxool Posts: 2,460member
    I agree, nice lookin' setup. Thanks for posting the pictos.



    The kitty kibble is good too in case you want a snack!



    The real question is, where's the TiVo hiding?
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