I use raspberry pi’s quite alot in my work and home life, they are a very handly little platform for both development and electronics that can be had very cheaply. Since the r-pi2’s have come out, i have been slowly moving some services onto the new boards, but not had cases to put them all into. This got me motivated to finally tackle a r-pi2 lego case. I made it from lego technic that i had lying around, it has worked quite well for 6+ months so far:
Lego r-pi2 case
However i have been battling with slow connections on the r-pi’s that i use as WAN connectivity devices (including a VPN router so i can go dark against data retention, Squid proxys, caching name servers, etc.). Although it would be a simple task to extend the lego case, i had come across another solution in my travels at work.
I had just been swapping out old Cisco 4400 series Digital Media Players. One was completely dead so i opened it up and stripped out the contents. I suspected it would be a good size for two r-pi2’s plus it has good shielding. I had to strip out the back plate, and also cut a hole in one side to allow the USB power connection to the pi2.
First r-pi2 mounted, you can see when the side needs to be cut to allow powering the r-pi2
The second r-pi2 also fits in with its USB power, making the case a very good size for these boards. I am a little concerned that they are only screwed in using one screw at the moment, i think i will probably mount some more brass stand offs to stabilise it. The USB and Ethernet ports are accessible
Success, two pi’s mounted in the case, about to be put back together
The top of the case touches on the ethernet ports of the r-pi2’s, but it doesn’t stop being able to re-fit it.
Done, and using the flash doesn’t re-boot it 🙂
Again, if you want to get your hands dirty with coding or mods, the r-pi’s are an excellent base to start with. And with a version of Windows 10 coming along to supplement the range of OS’s already available its becoming a very flexible platform.