How To Build A BayBus For Beginners

By: -=LRK=-  
Web Site: www.subdiv.net
Date: Pre-2005


Introduction
If you were to look on the internet for tutorials on Baybus construction and information on wiring, you can find it all over. The problem is, it's written BY people who understand it FOR people who understand it. Does that make sense? Not to me. How can I make a claim like that? Easy, a month ago, I didn't understand it, any of it. I read every article I could find on the subject, and had to piece together 200 steps from 50 articles, It was quite grueling, but I did manage to figure it out. Here it is, in it's simplest form. No complex details. No unneeded information. Direct, and to the point.

Buying the Pieces
You have 3 choices. You could buy a cheep version yourself at $25.00 - $35.00 (since you are cutting your case front panel, you can't go back and just buy a new one later). You could buy it from an online discount store for like $50.00 - $60.00 for everything with shipping. The third was is the easiest, safest and cheapest. Make your life easy and just buy the kit from https://subdiv.net for $49.95. The kit includes everything you need, as well as a 25 minute installation tutorial. The video includes even more detail than is included here.

What You Need
The Kit Comes With - Project Box, 4 DPDT Switches, 4 Blue LEDs, 4 Red LEDs, 8 LED Clips, 1 470ohm Resistor Network, 8 LED Cables, 1/8-in Heatshrink, 22g Red Wire, 22g Black Wire, 2 Male Molex Connector, 2 Male Molex Pins, 2 Female Molex Connector, 2 Female Molex Pins and How-to Guide.

Other Stuff - Drill with 1/4in bit, Soldering Iron, Hair Dryer, Scissors, and Pliers

Step One - Overview
Here is a diagram of all the parts and all the wires. Each line is a different color, but when wiring it doesn't matter what color wire you use. Just keep in mind to use Black for your ground wires when instructed (not 100% needed, but makes life easier with a standard). Other than that, use black, red, blue green, whatever, it doesn't matter. Each line in the diagram represents a wire that connects 2 pieces. The image below links to a much larger picture that you can print out for reference.
Step Two- The Faceplate

Take your switches and space them out on the faceplate, and mark the area off. If you make a diagram on the computer then print it out, you know it will be centered. Cut out the holes for the 4 switches and 8 LED lights. Place the lights and switches onto the plate. Make sure everything fits and is centered.

While actually doing the wiring, I recommend that you leave the switches on the faceplate and mount it onto a vise. This way you can work with both hands free, and with easy access to the switches. Later on, you can place it into the box itself. During the tutorial, I built it inside the box. My bad, don't do that.
 
Step Two- The Project Box
Once you have the faceplate, cut the needed holes in the box. I was dissatisfied with the project box that comes with the kit, so I would recommend a box that is 4"x2"x1", otherwise you will most likely have fitting problems. If you are going to use the supplied box, you should reevaluate how you want these cuts to be on the box, since it's a different size, this article won't be 100% accurate for the box cuts.

Make 4 holes for the switches, but make 8 gouges in the box for the LED lights... it's a tight fit.


Also cut 4 holes on the top and bottom of the case for the LED wires that will be coming out the top and bottom.

The last holes will be on the back for the speaker terminal and the binding post.


Step Three- The Wiring
As I said, work on the wiring outside of the box, and put it inside later. For now, follow the diagram as for which wires jump the others.

Start with the middle. Solder a 6" red wire, one end is loose, the other connects to the left middle of the switch. Next, solder another wire onto the same joint on the next switch, and connect that one with the one next to it. Do the same with the black wire as well. Basically, the 6" will later be connected to the molex for power. You then leapfrog each joint to connect all the wires down the middle.

Take the LED connector and cut off the rounded end, we will be using the part that usually plugs onto the motherboard.


Once you have cut and stripped all 16 wires, solder the black wire to the top right and lower left terminals. Next, run a wire from the top left terminal to the lower right terminal. Screw the speaker terminal and the binding post into the project box if you haven't already. When you finish that, you will have one joint left on the switch. Connect that one to the speaker terminal. At this point you have alot of wires and a big mess.

Solder a red wire to the network resistor about 2-3" long on one of the ends. Then solder each of the white wires from the LED connector onto each of the remaining pins.
1. Be careful, they break easily.
2. If you don't use heatshrink anywhere else, at least use it here. It's a tight fit, and you don't want any of the wires touching.
3. You will have one extra pin when your done, so if you break one by accident, you have another shot.

Connect the red wire from the resistor to a Solder Shield. This doesn't come with the kit for some reason, but you need one because you cannot solder to the binding post, which is where we will be placing the shield. You will run a second wire out to nowhere about 6" long, also connected to the shield.

Now things are going to start getting tight and hard to handle. Take the LED connectors and stick each one through the holes in the top and bottom of the project box. NOTE: The connections are backwards. So take the connectors on the bottom of the switch and run it through the top holes. Take the connectors on the top and run that through the bottom of the box.

The last part of this step is to carefully jam all the wires into that little box. Take the switches off the front panel, if that was how you assembled all this wiring, and stick the snitches through the holes in the box AND the faceplate so that you are connecting the box with the faceplate. Once you have jammed everything in the box (LED connectors hanging out), and the box joined with the faceplate, connect the LED lights. Take the extra wire and carefully slide that back into the box as well. NOTE: The white wire is the positive, and so is the longest LED pin. The black wire lines up with the shortest pin. The LED pins are long, so you may cut them down with scissors if you want.

Take the molex pins and connect them to the 6" black and 2 6" red wires you have left over. Then, take the pins and plug them into the molex connector. NOTE: if you do have 2 red wires, label one of them as 5v the other is 12v. The 12v one comes from the binding post, and that will line up with the yellow wire from the power supply. The 5v one comes from the middle terminals on the switches, and that will line up with the red wire from the power supply. Place the black wire in either of the 2 open middle holes in the molex.


Step Four - Connecting the Fans
 

Most fans have 2 or 3 wires, a red one, a yellow one and a black one. The Black is always the ground. The black wire will plug into one of the speaker terminals. The red, yellow, blue (whatever) wires will all connect to the binding post.

If your fan has red and yellow wires, connect them together, that's fine.

If you have more than one fan you would like to have working off one switch, connect them together in the speaker terminal.

If In this last picture, you can see the red wires are plugged into the post. I had pre-spliced all the other wires earlier in the connection, so that I only had 3 wires actually plugged in there, otherwise it would be a tight fit at the post. Lastly, I plugged each black wire into each speaker terminal. Ignore the red/black switches, we aren't using them for that, just one for each fan.
Step Five- Conclusion
This project sucks. Look, I could lie to you and say it's easy, but it's not. But I do think that with this tutorial, and the one at CaseEtc, you can figure it out. Of course, you could just go to the store and buy your own for half the cost...


If you found this article helpful, you can find plenty more back on the main page.
https://subdiv.net