I’ve done some more work on the enclosure today, thanks to the wide variety of tools provided by the All Hands Active hackerspace in downtown Ann Arbor. A lot of people have been questioning the case I’m building for the Raspberry Pi, since it is so much bigger than the unit itself. I think these pictures should start to show what I have in mind; basically I want to stick certain hardware into the enclosure with the Pi, and then use extenders to get some of the ports available externally (like the RJ-45 in the pictures). I have a feeling the lack of an HDMI port may bite me in the ass in the future, but for now, none of my plans involve video.
So far, all of the modifications to the case have been done using a file. There are better tools to use for this (like a band saw) but I guess I’m just old fashioned. You can’t see it in the gallery, but I’ve also got an audio jack soldered to a speaker now. Some of my plans involve TTS so that the machine can tell you what it is doing.
I still need to get a GPS receiver into this unit, as well as a bluetooth dongle, which will require a USB hub. If the hub requires power, I’ll probably have to get two power sources into the device, which won’t be pretty. Wish me luck!
Just use a single 4 port powered hub and run the pi off one of the ports. But I just noticed that this is awhile ago so never mind, you’ve probably got it all dialed in now.