Building a mini raspberry Pi computer

[Duhjoker]

Hi guys

I build a lot RC stuff and recently built myself a Mame arcade cocktail cabinet. I'm always looking for new cool and unique projects to create and I ran across the novena DIY board and that gave me an idea. I would like to build a small modular rectangular box that houses a Pi and what ever else I need for what I want to do plus a small led screen. This casing will not fold but be a single unit with the led in front and the components built behind it. I plan on designing and 3D printing the case.

I mainly want to use this for on the fly arduino or multiwii configuration, a few mame arcade games, web browsing, music, and maybe a DVD drive. The unit itself will lay horizontally on its edge so I was thinking of maybe retrofitting a laser keyboard into the device as well. A blue tooth RX unit would be a nice too along with Wifi to help me with the quad stuff.

I don't know how much of this is possible so I hope you guys can help me figure all this out.

[blaablaaguy]

You could use a usb power bank if you want to make it portable. A wifi dongle will give wifi because that what a wifi dongle does othetwise it wouldnt be called a wifi dongle. Of you want a lot of game emulators you can use retropie+raspbian or whatever usong berryboot or you can use mame4all-pi if you want it to run in raspbian. Pi probably cant power a DVD drive on its own so you mighn need an external power supply. Dunno what you mean abot the keyboard.

[Duhjoker]

Here's a link to a laser keyboard........

http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.vi ... ID=EBAY-US

I was actually hoping to use a Lipo or two to power the device.

[Duhjoker]

Are raspberry pi's Bluetooth compatible? For example I can put a Bluetooth RF transceiver module on my Quadcopter, what module could I use to receive those signals for debug using multiwii config?

[rpdom]

The Pi doesn't have any built-in Bluetooth hardware, but you can easily add a USB Bluetooth dongle.

[Duhjoker]

Is there a way to use an internal type DVDR or will I be forced to use a USB type? I ask because with the DVDR, the keyboard/mouse, wifi and Bluetooth dongles, that will fill the available USB ports. Is there a way to expand the ports to have more?

I also want to ask about power. I would like to use Lipo power with a built in charger but I cannot figure out how to do that. I'm thinking maybe I can connect the battery to a balance charger module with an extra set of wires to go to power but as far as I can tell the Pi is powered by the micro USB. Is there an alternative power input that wires can be soldered to?

[Douglas6]

Could you explain 'DVDR' Bluetooth vs. USB? The only Google hits I get for DVDR refer to shiny disks.

[Duhjoker]

I apologize I mean DVDR drive, they come quite compact in either internal and external but I'm hoping I use an internal drive to save on USB ports

[Douglas6]

Ah, sorry, thought you were referencing Bluetooth.

[fruitoftheloom]

Could you explain 'DVDR' Bluetooth vs. USB? The only Google hits I get for DVDR refer to shiny disks.

The RPi only has USB and GPIO outputs, you may find a BT Module which connects to GPIO like:

http://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/a-c ... spberry-pi

[Duhjoker]

Thank you! That's the exact type of Bluetooth my quad uses but I didn't know if they could send and receive to each other and that would give me an extra port.

Got any tricks like that for wifi?

[Douglas6]

Great for serial communication, not really Bluetooth.

[rpdom]

To get additional USB ports you just add a USB hub or two. It is best to use an externally powered hub, otherwise you'll be limited by the maximum current output on the Pi.

The main limitation is that all USB on the Pi will be channelled through the single USB port on the BCM283x chip, so the total USB bandwidth is limited to a theoretical maximum of 480Mb/s, rather than being a per-port limit.

[Duhjoker]

I think I have my power supply problem fixed. I can take a 3-s battery 500mAh and run it through a 5v power BEC then splice the output terminals into a micro USB cable. Doing this I can also power the USB hub with another splice.

Then I can take the input terminal and make a short female to female terminal wire so then a male to male to plug so when I design my case I can make it easily plug into my balance charger.

[Duhjoker]

Can any Sandisk micro sd class 10 ad card work like 16gb or does it have to be a Pi version?

[blaablaaguy]

I used to have a 32gig sandisk card in my pi which I think was class 10.

[Duhjoker]

Ok so I have questions about the OS's available. I was talking to my friends at arduino about getting thier IDE to work on the Pi and I was linked to something called Ubuntu. I know it's a Linux based OS but I don't know what all it works with. Can I still do the Pi arcade system with this OS?

[fruitoftheloom]

Ok so I have questions about the OS's available. I was talking to my friends at arduino about getting thier IDE to work on the Pi and I was linked to something called Ubuntu. I know it's a Linux based OS but I don't know what all it works with. Can I still do the Pi arcade system with this OS?

Yes you can use any OS which is suitable for whatever model of Raspberry Pi you have, BUT Raspbian is de-facto one and if you have issues you will get help from a larger community. Your choice !

[Duhjoker]

I'm hoping I can get what I need out of one SD card so I don't have to keep up with the tiny lil guys. I see I can use chrome with raspbian so maybe I can use clean flight for the Quadcopter part.

[blaablaaguy]

I think I have my power supply problem fixed. I can take a 3-s battery 500mAh and run it through a 5v power BEC then splice the output terminals into a micro USB cable. Doing this I can also power the USB hub with another splice.

Then I can take the input terminal and make a short female to female terminal wire so then a male to male to plug so when I design my case I can make it easily plug into my balance charger.

Dont realy think 500mah is going to last long. Theres an app that estimates how long your pi will last using a powerbank and 1000mah for a pi 2 with no addons or keyboard or mouse or anything like that says around 3hours.
1000mah is estimated around 7-8 hours for an A+ though

[GTR2Fan]

I think I have my power supply problem fixed. I can take a 3-s battery 500mAh and run it through a 5v power BEC then splice the output terminals into a micro USB cable. Doing this I can also power the USB hub with another splice.

Then I can take the input terminal and make a short female to female terminal wire so then a male to male to plug so when I design my case I can make it easily plug into my balance charger.

Or do it the way phone battery banks do it with cells in parallel (much safer than series for Li-ions) and up-convert the 3.7V to 5V with a 5V 3A step-up converter. There's no need for a balanced charger then, plus you could use a very cheap Li-ion charging board that's designed to charge safely via a standard microUSB socket. That has the added advantage of not having to make up any custom leads.

You'd still need to monitor the Li-ion cell voltage during discharge though. Dragging them any lower than 2.5V will cause them irreversible damage and may lead to catastrophic cell failure. Li-ion is perfectly safe if you know what you're doing, but potentially extremely dangerous if you don't.

[blaablaaguy]

I think I have my power supply problem fixed. I can take a 3-s battery 500mAh and run it through a 5v power BEC then splice the output terminals into a micro USB cable. Doing this I can also power the USB hub with another splice.

Then I can take the input terminal and make a short female to female terminal wire so then a male to male to plug so when I design my case I can make it easily plug into my balance charger.

Or do it the way phone battery banks do it with cells in parallel (much safer than series for Li-ions) and up-convert the 3.7V to 5V with a 5V 3A step-up converter. There's no need for a balanced charger then, plus you could use a very cheap Li-ion charging board that's designed to charge safely via a standard microUSB socket. That has the added advantage of not having to make up any custom leads.

You'd still need to monitor the Li-ion cell voltage during discharge though. Dragging them any lower than 2.5V will cause them irreversible damage and may lead to catastrophic cell failure. Li-ion is perfectly safe if you know what you're doing, but potentially extremely dangerous if you don't.

According to this Adafruit thing i read, your not supposed to use lithium ion in parallel or series. Or maybe that was LiPo. It would be a LOT easier to just use a powerbank

[RobertD]

Portable Wireless 10m Remote Bluetooth Keyboard with Multi-Touch Pad Mouse

[GTR2Fan]

According to this Adafruit thing i read, your not supposed to use lithium ion in parallel or series.

Li-ions are fine in parallel as long as the cells are of the protected type. Series requires a balanced battery management system as used in laptop battery packs.

It would be a LOT easier to just use a powerbank.

As long as it's one that can power whilst being charged, agreed.

[Duhjoker]

I'm pretty sure y'all mean li-ion batteries. Hobby grade lipos come in cells that are 3.7v with varying Mah. In order to make a 11.1v 3s battery you have to take 3x 3.7v lipos and chain them together in order to get the required voltage. If I run my 3s 11.1v 500mah Lipo through a 5v regulator or BEC or step up,etc Im actually doubling the amount of mah to a hair over double.