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Best way to mount multiple micro converters in a rack?

PostPosted: Sun Aug 11, 2019 1:20 am
by Andrew Disbrow
I am looking for ideas for mounting at least 10 micro converters either on a rack shelf or somewhere inside my rack. Who has pictures of their mounting solutions?

Re: Best way to mount multiple micro converters in a rack?

PostPosted: Mon Aug 12, 2019 8:21 pm
by Evan Vickers
I have a picture of what I used, but it has only a few converters in it and it's not my favorite solution.

1. the way it holds onto the cards is odd and not useful.
2. It has a weird rack height. Not quite 4U's. Maybe that was intentional for cables to come through but I just find it odd.
3. The adaptors get hot, and you need airflow over them. There is nothing in this setup that does that. So I took some fans meant for old platter Hard drives and cut a notch out of them so they would fit past the upper lip. I also had to make a custom foam harness for each fan since they created alot of vibration noise otherwise. I then powered those fans using some PC fan splitters. It was janky as heck, but it worked.

Re: Best way to mount multiple micro converters in a rack?

PostPosted: Mon Aug 12, 2019 9:21 pm
by MarkAmber
These are throw down boxes, not meant for rack use. They will overheat if they cannot dissipate fully in an open air environment.

If all the boxes are actually the same height, middle Atlantic makes a cable box mounting system called VRS. It will give you a bit more airflow.

Otherwise look into the 1/3 U stuff blackmagic makes or opengear cards in an opengear frame for rack based stuff.

Otherwise I would just put them on separate rack shelves with ample room between and rack cooling solution.


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Re: Best way to mount multiple micro converters in a rack?

PostPosted: Tue Aug 13, 2019 4:44 am
by Dave Del Vecchio
There is this rack panel which allows you to mount 8 micro converters side, with external access to the SDI ports:
https://www.markertek.com/product/ctx-b ... converters

I suppose you could use two of them if you need to mount more than 8. If you want to mount them entirely internally, then a rack shelf of some sort would probably work. You can probably remove the screws from one side of the Micro Converter case and mount the converter on its side, screwing in from the bottom of the rack shelf to secure them.

I probably wouldn't worry too much about heat with the Micro Converters as those units don't seem to get very hot. The larger Mini Converters (especially the 4K Mini Converter models), seem to run much hotter and are probably using the metal case for heat dissipation. But I don't think the same thing is true of the Micro Converters.

Re: Best way to mount multiple micro converters in a rack?

PostPosted: Tue Aug 13, 2019 12:12 pm
by MarkAmber
Dave Del Vecchio wrote:I probably wouldn't worry too much about heat with the Micro Converters as those units don't seem to get very hot. The larger Mini Converters (especially the 4K Mini Converter models), seem to run much hotter and are probably using the metal case for heat dissipation. But I don't think the same thing is true of the Micro Converters.


My experience as well.


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Re: Best way to mount multiple micro converters in a rack?

PostPosted: Tue Aug 13, 2019 1:44 pm
by Xtreemtec
The micro converter HDMI > SDI and the SDI > HDMI are base on a dedicated sdi converter chip that does not get anywere near the temperature of the FPGA's that are in the Micro bidirectional and mini converters.

There for you dont need a big cooling system for those micro's just a bit of normal airflow should be sufficient. ;)