March 02, 2013

Lego case for my Raspberry Pi v2.0


Versión del blog en Español aquí

After building the first case for my Raspberry Pi with Lego pieces, and thanks to some advice from some of my friends, I decided that my first case needed some (if not many) improvements.

For the second version, I took my time and found pieces of the same color, in this case, red. I chose this color because I wanted to put some holes for ventilation and the only pieces I had where red. I also put small doors for the RCA video connector and the audio jack so that I can access them easily. I also put a couple of hinges on the cover so I can have easy access to the inside. And finally, my idea is to overclock the board and to do this I need to use heat-sinks on the chips, I placed a small fan to help with the circulation of air.

This is the result:

UPDATE: A short time ago, a reader made me notice that I mention heat sinks for my Raspberry Pi in this entry, but that I don't post any pictures. Well, with my most sincere apologies for this slip and the delay, here there is a couple of pictures of the board with the heat sinks:

Determining where the heat sinks should go was easy thanks to this great article (in Spanish, easy to understand just by watching the pictures).

5 comments:

  1. hi my name is Nathan Weber and i was just wondering where are the heat sinks that you said you put in. i would also like to know what size fan are you using, how did you mount it to the lego case and what lego pieces did you use to make it.
    my email is: nathonweber4@gmail.com

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    1. Hello Nathan. You're right, there is no picture with the heat sinks on the board. I meant to post it but I completely forgot. Sorry about that. I will update the entry soon. In the meantime, just to give you something, I checked the working temperature of the board here. It's in Spanish, but you get an idea of where the heat sinks should go by watching the pictures. I used an old processor heat sink and cut three pieces with my Dremel tool and glued them to the chips with adhesive thermal paste.
      Also, I'm afraid I can't tell you exactly what pieces I used for the case, because I just basically got my old Lego fire station set and used the first pieces that fit with what I needed. I can tell you, though, that the black piece for the fan is from my Lego sub-aquatic station set and I used a 4cm x 4cm fan. I was just lucky that the holes for the screws fit perfectly with the holes in the black piece. If you check the pictures, notice that the screws go through the holes in the piece and then screwed to the fan. Since the black piece is from a Lego set, it's just attached to the cover from below.

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  2. How would I go about getting all the legos I need? I have none.

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    1. Well... I've read somewhere that there are some stores where you can go and find all kind of legos in buckets and you just get whatever you want. I've never been in one of them, though, and I don't know of any of them here in Spain (to be honest, I never tried to look for one). I got all my legos from sets my father bought for me when I was a kid, more specifically, the fire station set and the sub-aquatic set. I wish I could give you a list of the parts I used but I'm afraid that I was just using the first piece that got to my hand and worked for what I wanted. It's a little bit the Lego experience when you're not using the instructions. What I do remember is that, other than the piece where the fan goes, and maybe the doors and hinges, I didn't use fancy legos, just 1x1, 2x1, 2x2, 1x6, 2x6,... parts with different thicknesses.

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    2. Thanks man. Much appreciated.

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