The PlyPi

[kdakin]

Amazing looking case! Perhaps you could countersink the bolts and raise the side up a bit on the top, and lower on the bottom so you could make them stackable. Have you had any problem with overheating? I am working on one like this, but out of plastic and with an LED showing power on. I will post a few images later. Keep working on this one, it looks great!

[quote="Ha! Nice idea re: stackability. I'd not thought about it, but that makes a great deal of sense".

Have you looked at the Pi-Stack range on this forum?
Why do you think its called Pi-Stack ?

[kdakin]

How do you connect to the GPIO pins with this (and other) closed designs I wonder?

[rurwin]

Many people wont want to. But if you do it would be trivial to arrange for a slot in the right place.

[Montala]

This does look very smart indeed.

I am sure that a lot of folk would love to buy one, if they could be produced 'in volume'... I know I would!

Thank you! As I just said, I'm away from home (and so away from most of my tools) and so can't get any made for the next couple of months. If you were still interested then, I'm sure I could put something together. But volume's pretty much out of the question with the tools I have. It's not impossible...but it is for me, alas.

No problem there so far as I am concerned... I will 'bookmark' this, and perhaps we can talk again in a couple of months time, and see what the position is then?

Hopefully you aren't going to vanish from the Forum altogether for all that time though?

[benedict3578]

When you say an LED showing power on - this is a separate LED from the one on the Pi itself? How are you setting that up, if I might be so nosy?

You could either drill a hole for the original RPi LED, or you could spilce an normal size LED into the power cable. The tiny voltage taken shouldent affect the Pi, but the extra light would be brighter. You could countersink it into the main case. Good luck.

[annodomini2]

Great job!

[themanoutside]

How do you connect to the GPIO pins with this (and other) closed designs I wonder?

As rurwin says, I'm not really intending to play much with the GPIO pins at the moment. In the future this will (I hope) change. For example, when the camera module becomes available, I think it would be nice to sink the lens into the top layer of the case (not the most practical place, but aesthetically the kind of thing I'd enjoy). For that, though, I'm guessing I'd need greater depth. And with this design it's very straight forward just to add a couple more layers of ply to achieve that.

No problem there so far as I am concerned... I will 'bookmark' this, and perhaps we can talk again in a couple of months time, and see what the position is then?

Hopefully you aren't going to vanish from the Forum altogether for all that time though?

That's great. I've a plan for another case I intend to make whilst away from home with hand tools (similar shape, different materials) so you may even be interested in that.

As for vanishing - definitely not. It's a very busy time at the moment and I've not had chance for PiPlay™, but as soon as I'm able, I'll no doubt be begging help from you all!

You could either drill a hole for the original RPi LED, or you could spilce an normal size LED into the power cable. The tiny voltage taken shouldent affect the Pi, but the extra light would be brighter. You could countersink it into the main case. Good luck.

Now that makes sense! Thank you

As always, thank you to you all for your kind comments.

[therealeasterbunny]

Loving this!

(aka the "Raspberry Ply"?)

Wood is the new aluminium!

[themanoutside]

Just a quick update for everyone - at the weekend I needed to run a slideshow over a good few hours and I thought this a good opportunity to see how the case dealt with heat. I'm pleased to say that, after seven hours scrolling through 100+ large images, the Pi is still 100% solid with no apparent sign of melting. Hopefully this means that even the most intensive things I throw at it in future (which, admittedly, are unlikely to be that intensive) will not require additional cooling.

That said, I have thought about interesting ways to vent the case and may play about with that in the future...

Oh, and...

Wood is the new aluminium!

Couldn't agree more!

Hope you're all doing well. Really enjoying looking through the new case designs tonight.

Stephen

[pygmy_giant]

no compiment required from me but have one anyway - its my favourite - is it intentionally vesa mount shaped?

Should be possible to create a laser cutting vector file template to batch produce these if someone was feeling enterprising enough...

[themanoutside]

no compiment required from me but have one anyway - its my favourite - is it intentionally vesa mount shaped?

Should be possible to create a laser cutting vector file template to batch produce these if someone was feeling enterprising enough...

I thought about the VESA issue recently. I wonder how close it is to size.

The only problem I see with laser cutting (and it's a purely aesthetic thing which shouldn't really matter) is the burning at the point of cut. When I get around to upgrading my saw, I should be able to stack the pieces of ply and cut the production time down considerably by cutting many layers at once.

Right, I'm off to find out VESA mount measurements...

[themanoutside]

Right, I'm off to find out VESA mount measurements...

Ah, well, that was far less complicated than I thought. Although the PlyPi is rather undecided. Long ways it wants to be a 100mm and short ways it wants to be a 75mm. I wonder what it'd look like stretched to accommodate...?

And although I didn't clearly state, you might now have guessed - no, there was no definite plan to make it look like a VESA mount. The main inspiration was 'flower press', and it just developed from there.

[pygmy_giant]

Who cares anyway - looks beautiful the way it is.

Could be handy bolted to the back of a monitor.

The very thought of cutting ply with a laser causes me nasal halucinations - considerable sanding could be required to remove the burned edge - not so hard on such a flowing shape though, and who knows it might be attractive depending on the ply used?

That aside, I've seem some 'eco' tower cases made from corrigated card - perhaps there could be a poor/lazy man's version made from corregated card layers PVAed together? Perhaps people could download printable templates and cut their own?

Hope you feel suitably proud.

[themanoutside]

That aside, I've seem some 'eco' tower cases made from corrigated card - perhaps there could be a poor/lazy man's version made from corregated card layers PVAed together? Perhaps people could download printable templates and cut their own?

Hope you feel suitably proud.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... =40&t=8703

Proud? Proud doesn't even come close

[danh]

Best case I have see so far.

Do you mind if I copy it

[uglymonkey]

Ive been undecided over my case design for a while now, yours has just made up my mind.

I have an 8feet by 2feet piece of ply in the shed, should be enough to make a few mistakes

[killor]

Very nice and strong!
To see your nice CASE , I remembered that a
a month ago, I made a client of turkey, a case it can be adapted to attach the monitor close behind. VESA 100x 100 or 75 x 75

[walleee]

Ive been undecided over my case design for a while now, yours has just made up my mind.

I have an 8feet by 2feet piece of ply in the shed, should be enough to make a few mistakes

any update on this?

would be interested in knowing how you got along with it and how you constructed it

[TheLundstrom]

I'm away from home at the moment and forgot to scan the templates to keep with me. If I can get someone to dig them out and scan them for me, then I'd be very happy to share them individually, but honestly they're a bit rough for public consumption!

Nice work! I would love to see the templates.

[jojojojojojo]

Hi themanoutside,
I hope you are not mad if I post a pic of my template which entirely tries to follow your design:-)
In my case its just a square around the Pi, and a few circles. The outline can be constructed from the data in the picture.
I'm not yet finished building though..
Regards,
Johannes

I'm away from home at the moment and forgot to scan the templates to keep with me. If I can get someone to dig them out and scan them for me, then I'd be very happy to share them individually, but honestly they're a bit rough for public consumption!

Nice work! I would love to see the templates.

[TheLundstrom]

Thanks Jojo

[jakoblerche]

First post here (hi guys and girls)

Have to say this is one of the most beautiful cases i have seen so far, can't wait to get my Pi and build a custom case myself.

[kieranc]

I was also inspired by your design and was planning on copying it almost verbatim, slightly extended/rounded corners and generally a little bigger (here's the plan) but the plan changed a bit en route!
Having cut the top and bottom pieces it occurred to me I could just use blocks in the corners and leave the sides open, much easier to fabricate, easy access to all the ports and good airflow. Here's the result:






What's up with the tiny images? Gallery here.

I'm not entirely happy with it - as you can see it's not quite symmetrical, not far off but not perfect. This is kind of what prompted me to go with the quick & dirty blocks approach rather than all ply. Once I make an accurate template I'll probably make an all ply version. The first piece was cut with a bandsaw then duplicates were made using a table router with a bearing cutter - this is a very nice way to make several at once. The same method was used to shape the blocks once they'd been fitted. A quick sand and the result is as you see! The hardest bit was finding some bolts small enough to attach the Pi!
So, thanks for the inspiration, when I make a better one I'll post it up too.

[themanoutside]

Hi everyone (especially Johannes and kieranc)

I'm sorry it's taken such a long time - I've had a very busy year (first part of a two-part marriage, an exhibition and some boring health stuff) and so it's taken much too long to get the plans computerised. But they're now ready! You can download them from my blog - http://singlelensreflections.blogspot.c ... plans.html

Love the variations you've already come up with. I was intending to create a pretty media centre case, but a new smart telly has reduced the need for such a thing. So I think my next PiProject will be some kind of server (web, print or file...).

And one final note - thanks to playing with the Pi, I've felt able to almost ditch windows - old laptop died and my replacement (Lenovo X230) is happily chugging along with Ubuntu 13.04. Without the Pi to experiment with and learn the linux basics, I'd not have been confident enough to just dive in.

Hope you're all well and enjoying yourselves.

Best wishes

Stephen