Gadgetory

so what we're looking at here is a pretty typical room scale VR setup you got your light stands you got your cables running everywhere extension cords all that kind of stuff and honestly it's fine as long as you're the type of self-aware nerd here let's look at what else we got here got a computer that is comfortable running HDMI cables and Ethernet cables all along their floors but let's say your girlfriend comes over your grandma or you want to have company over the first thing they're gonna say is what is all this junk so today we are gonna be creating a stealthy VR setup sponsored by oculus so step one for getting a VR set up less intrusive looking is getting rid of the support pillars which usually means getting your cameras mounted on either the top part of the wall or a ceiling where they'll look kind of like you know a security camera or a piece of tape or nothing and they'll draw this attention but the problem is cable management even with our computer right next to this camera right here we have no extra length left in order to do any cable management and usb3 is extremely sensitive to increases in length and the signal degradation that goes along with that so because these cameras are actually pretty high bandwidth devices we're gonna need thank you Alex some of these these are USB 3 active extension cables which act as a signal repeater rather than just you know extra length of copper wire so that we can maintain the signal integrity for that camera that's not open and look it's the worst kind it's the kind that splinters apart into a hundred pieces when you try to so position wise have we decided on this for our three camera setup yeah all three cameras are perfectly working as is and there's tape on the ceiling as you can see for the positions when we actually mount them up there okay so there's a couple of advantages to having three rather than two cameras for an oculus VR setup because you can triangulate the position of the touch controllers and the headset you actually get aside from the ability to turn around and maintain your tracking you actually get more accurate tracking for room-scale gaming and I mean as much as we want to build a stealth setup we also want to build a no compromises gaming setup so we just need to mount some cameras oh yeah yeah okay let's do it well we need a PC in the ceiling also why cuz then it's a totally stealth you don't have wires going up and you want to hide the monitor yeah the monitors gonna be hind a mirror so you can't see it alone I mean okay cool so we have the benefit of doing this project in an office which means we've got a drop ceiling so come to so simply by lifting up and then there's ducting over there okay there's a lot of crap up here actually but by just lifting up these tiles we get access to about looks like about 18 inches of space up here where we could actually put I don't know if it's to code but but we can put the computer and monitor and everything else associated with it up here I mean I guess it's like it shouldn't be a cooling issue up here anything so for our system we're gonna be using this MSI d25 it's got a core i7 8700 six core it's got a gtx 1070 most importantly it's got easy plug for VR and it's got lots of USB 3 ports because when you're running extra cameras you need lots of USB 3 ports preferably on a couple of different controllers oh oh no way no there's a power outlet up there Oh awesome so you check it out oh wow yeah now this is what I'm talking about like it's actual actually like proper and everything well this is crazy you know how much it would cost us at this point to get something like that put in like now after the fact like hundreds and hundreds of dollars because we'd have to run it from the transformer which is the exact opposite corner of this building ok let's do it I mean dude we don't even need a long extension cord anymore it was like 15 feet with power taken care of we needed networking so what we could do is this is terminated in a female connector is we could just jacket yeah alright oh the whole thing ok ok yep thanks you take it I got it you know ok this would have to be pretty superhero mode for me to actually get it all the way over there I'm gonna try it's not sound successful or was it now what so let's get USB and HDMI over to here where the display is going to be the display needs to go all the way over here yeah well I can't the display go over here because you Vaughn thinks that a mirror would look bad on that wall hi I'm busy putting a USB and an HDMI cable all the way from over here to over there which is apparently your mandate why can't we just do that well let's just get the let's just get the wire run okay it's a good thing I don't need to be here very long yeah it looks really bad Alex you're not helping right now bros before hoes which I can say cuz her last name is ho with the computer up in the ceiling and working I left Alex to get the sensors off the floor using adhesive camera mounts next up floor height HDMI and USB ports for our headset after checking for studs we killed the power to the library and then got to cutting a hole in the drywall but not to be defeated by the in wall insulation we decided to jam a meter stick with cables tape to the end down the wall until it reached the correct height now how are we supposed to get this down there oh you know what we might still be able to do it but lower would have definitely been better we can always make it bigger I know you can always make a hole bigger I can't tell if I'm just jamming down insulation or if I'm actually wait no I think this is feeding in no I think I'm just dabbing it down our straight meter stick couldn't fit between the insulation and drywall but with some Canadian engineering we solved that problem okay Nassau and then wait a minute no this isn't a drywall saw no totally sure no I think we have a drywall saw this isn't it we do but I couldn't find it okay so yeah now I can mostly feel what's going on here I think mmm no I can't really I need a bigger hole I was kind of thinking that you'd expand down yeah there's just not enough weight my arm I assumed that was the next step uh it'd be about a meter down from me tumor me and try going down sideways up through for all time you know we're definitely hitting something here and is what we're hitting soft miss you're Alex it's all the way in I'm pulling back out okay so let's double check our leg care after doing a trial round of our JAMA ruler down the wall concept we were ready for the real thing we want to taper the end here for a smooth entry wait okay this is a lot thicker than what we put down there last time so the trick last time was kind of wiggling it back and forth until I could find the right opening oh wow ah it's the first time I've been elbow deep in the wall this hole required a bit more finesse than the last one since you'll actually be able to see it so we marked it off with tape and carefully cut thanks to my small hands they're basically a super power grabbing the cable was easy Oh awesome yeah was easier than expected nice and surprisingly enough the whole thing worked now at this point the screen was still sticking out like a sore thumb so we went to the hardware store and got a mirror to cannibalise I just reminded me that picture frames exist and probably would have worked a lot better for this Ben we returned the mirror and got a picture frame the front of the display was removed then the acrylic two-way mirror was cut to size with some extra love from the belt sander and then placed in our picture frame with double-sided tape everything was held together with some scrap wood and a lot of glue then left to dry overnight while the glue was drying there was time to fix the big hole in the wall we were able to get the proper cover for HDMI but USB ended up getting taken care of with duct tape not to trust it was anything but now just a couple finishing touches were left all right adding some wireless peripherals bringing in the mirror hiding the wires and wow this is a little crooked but that's actually a lot crooked but that's okay minor details and sort of like jiggle it around and it'll go back yeah okay that looks good though look at that everything else completely hidden away and this is the mirror display yeah so the idea is that this just kind of oh oh yeah it's attached with wires yep those cables are those cables are actually okay those cables are reasonably well managed we could probably stand a little bit of improvement here but you can't you can't really see them back here there's a lot of glare it's it's a mirror it's very mirror II okay tell me max you're more qualified than me would this kind of setup be more likely to get girlfriend approval than what we had before yeah cool so mission accomplished then we've solved the two main problems with deploying VR in the home number one unsightly wires there is basically nothing to be seen for our sensors or for our headset whenever we aren't actively using it thanks to this wall plate and honestly about an hour to two hours of running cables and number two convenience we've got somewhere we can store the whole setup and be up and running in the time that you are about to watch check this out cable managed of five with my blindfold on here get my touch controllers walk over and plug in I am in VR and then when I'm done put the whole thing away completely stealthy even if we have any issues with the setup all we got to do is use our subtle 2-way mirror to kind of recover bubbly whatever it is that's going on and we're back up and running so thanks to oculus for sponsoring this video oculus is actually celebrating the second birthday of the rift with a week-long promotional deal retailers globally will be offering a $50 wallet with the purchase of the rift and they'll be offering major discounts on rift content through the oculus store so you can check out all the 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