Ben Heck’s Raspberry Pi case (which looks *suspiciously* like a BBC Micro…)
We met Ben, King of the Modders, at Maker Faire back in May. He’s a stand-up chap, and took a Raspberry Pi home with him. Here’s what he did with it.
It flips up like a writing desk so you can keep things inside it, it's got a slot for "cartridges" (which you can also hack together at home) - I wish my Beeb had come with all these bells and whistles.
Here’s the episode of element14’s Ben Heck show which shows you what to do. Files for the case itself are available too; you’ll need to use a laser cutter, which is a great excuse to join a local Make Space, Hackspace or another hackers collective (there’s a large and growing list of where you can find such things at hackerspaces.org). element14 are also running a competition which closes August 18, where you can win the case featured in these pics and video. Thanks Ben – we love it. I hope we can get together again soon!
17 comments
Rick
Love the case! Someone had to make that at some point!
The expansion card idea is awesome too – opens up a huge number of possibilities, such as the suggested IR connection from two devices.
ZACHARiAS
Lovely! absolutly superb hack! thoug in portugal is not easy to find a laser machine ^^
kudos
reiuyi
As long as it’s cheap and not solely available from Element14 it’ll be successful to have such expansion boards
I mean that’s the whole selling point of raspi; cheap
Mike
It would be great to have Element 14 sponsor the peripheral slot wiring and add-on cards as an option to buy. Obviously Ben took a good deal of time to define the pin mapping on the Pi to the slot then to have cards made up with a buffer chip, etc. Putting them more into the wild could only help and generate sales for E14.
bsmulders
Look cool, although the APC would have made the whole mounting and port extension a tad easier, especially with the USB header it has. Too bad it doesn’t have GPIO and linux like the Raspberry.
bing
Looks great. Shame the hinges weren’t hidden though, they detract a little from the otherwise beautifully crafted lines.
Also being lazy and not checking for myself.. Can anyone display the RPi name and logo like that?
liz
Ben can. We’ve given him a licence to do so. And he’s not selling the case; if you’re making one for yourself at home, then you can put the logo on it. If you’re going to be selling them, you need to come and talk to us first.
Asim
Ben needs to iron his shirt. It looks like he slept in it :P
frenk
great video.
Keep up the good work
Chris
YaY! A resource for the build! ”Files for the case itself”
All Ben had was links to other videos and his Twitt. on YouTube.
AndrewS
When “identifying” the components on the board, it’s clear Ben hasn’t read http://elinux.org/RPi_Hardware ;)
Chris
You would think that the time that he first advertized the Raspberry Pi that he would know every component on the board. Would you want to know what is in your drink before you say “Cheers!”?
AndrewS
Sorry, that wasn’t intended as a criticism – I think what Ben’s done is great. Just pointing out that detailed info *is* available, and _some_ of what Ben said was wrong.
William H. Bell
Hacking USB power supplies does not always work. For example, cutting the cable for the RS recommended power supply to fit a switch will render it useless.
marco
What brand is Ben’s white experimental board?
andres
Hello this is my Pi case, made with an Acrylic Pills container.
The name is “Pi Blue Case”.
I bought the pill container with less than 2 dollars.
Michael
Ok so I love the idea of the board ad-ons and I was just speaking with a teacher who got rather excited at the idea of the Pi and any/everything that goes with it. So the question becomes. Where do you source those connectors and boards?