Pi Control Hub: The HUB

29 Aug 2016

It is now time!! to put the all the electronic components together into a nice enclosure, which I am calling the HUB ,using some 3D printing with Wood filament and some basic wood working using a Dremel tool.Here is a gallery of the finished HUB

{gallery}Pi3 Control HUB
Front
Top - with the Pi Camera just out of its slot
Pi Camera which can be easily moved around with a flexible gear tie and a 3D printed holder
Bottom, sense Hat connected to Pi 3, this is to use at night in the dark..
Top - speakers to play music

{gallery}Pi3 Control HUB

Front

Top - with the Pi Camera just out of its slot

Pi Camera which can be easily moved around with a flexible gear tie and a 3D printed holder

Bottom, sense Hat connected to Pi 3, this is to use at night in the dark..

Top - speakers to play music

As part of the build , start of by cutting a couple of Hobby wood board as shown in the pictures below

{gallery}Building the Wooden Frame
Mark the size of the components like the Pi 7 inch screen , Speakers ..
Use the Dremel with a cutting bit, for the 7 inch display
Cutting slots for the speakers
slot for the Sense Hat mounted on the Pi3
Gluing to build the frame, and leaving to dry over night
Adding wood putty to fill in the gaps
Sanding any rough edges
Staining and leaving in to dry for a couple of hours
Finishing of with Painters Touch, which gives it a nice glossy and semi waterproof finish

{gallery}Building the Wooden Frame

Mark the size of the components like the Pi 7 inch screen , Speakers ..

Use the Dremel with a cutting bit, for the 7 inch display

Cutting slots for the speakers

slot for the Sense Hat mounted on the Pi3

Gluing to build the frame, and leaving to dry over night

Adding wood putty to fill in the gaps

Sanding any rough edges

Staining and leaving in to dry for a couple of hours

Finishing of with Painters Touch, which gives it a nice glossy and semi waterproof finish

Putting the speakers together, download and 3D print the STL files attached below, using wood filament. Here I am using wood filament to 3D print, so that I can sand it and then Stain it, so that it matches with the wooden fame .

Also 3D print a holder for the Sense hat and the Raspberry Pi 3 using wood filament, here is the link to the wood filament I am using from digitmakers.ca

https://digitmakers.ca/product/3d-printer-wood-filament-natural-brown/

Suggest slicer setting to use for 3D printing with wood filament

Layer height - 0.2 mm

Infill density - 40%

Temperature - 200 C

{gallery} Putting the Speaker together
3D printing the speaker holder, you will need another copy of this ..
Staining the 3D printed parts. Dont forget to sand the parts before staining
Glue the componets together, here you can use the same wood glue used for the wooden frame
Adding the Grid

{gallery} Putting the Speaker together

3D printing the speaker holder, you will need another copy of this ..

Staining the 3D printed parts. Dont forget to sand the parts before staining

Glue the componets together, here you can use the same wood glue used for the wooden frame

Adding the Grid

Now, lets add a Handle and the 3D printing part for the Pi Camera to top of the Hub frame. To hold the camera I decided to use a flexible gear tie , which means you can point the camera in any direction you want, by warping the gear tie to the handle.

For 3D printing the Pi Camera holder I am using black 1.75mm PLA and here are some suggested slicer setting to use for 3D printing with wood filament

Layer height - 0.3 mm

Infill density - 20%

Temperature - 205 C

I purchased the handle and the Gear tie at a local hardware store called HomeDepot.ca and also bought matching screws and nuts..

{gallery}Adding Handle and Pi Camera
Screwing the Handle to the top
3D print the Pi Camera holder
Camera will fit in the slot and can be pulled out the stream video when ever required
To hold the camera in place use a flexible gear tie

{gallery}Adding Handle and Pi Camera

Screwing the Handle to the top

3D print the Pi Camera holder

Camera will fit in the slot and can be pulled out the stream video when ever required

To hold the camera in place use a flexible gear tie

Adding the Pi3 , sense hat and all the other components to the inside of the hub frame. For more info on the speaker circuit and how to setup Mopidy to play music, check out the blog at

Pi Control Hub: Music with Mopidy and Home Assistant

{gallery} Adding Pi3 and other components inside the frame
Add the sense hat to the 3D printed holder
Cut out a piece of plastic to diffuse the RGB leds of the sense hat , I am using a cover piece from an old notebook
Add the Pi Screen and the Pi3 to the frame, attach the cable for the screen , here I am using the Pi camera cable to connect the Pi3 and Screen driver
Add the speakers and the Pi Camera
3D print holder for the Audio Amplifier and the Lipo charger
Adding Lipo, Audio Amp, switch and Lipo charger to the frame.
Gluing the components together

{gallery} Adding Pi3 and other components inside the frame

Add the sense hat to the 3D printed holder

Cut out a piece of plastic to diffuse the RGB leds of the sense hat , I am using a cover piece from an old notebook

Add the Pi Screen and the Pi3 to the frame, attach the cable for the screen , here I am using the Pi camera cable to connect the Pi3 and Screen driver

Add the speakers and the Pi Camera

3D print holder for the Audio Amplifier and the Lipo charger

Adding Lipo, Audio Amp, switch and Lipo charger to the frame.

Gluing the components together

Now to run Home-Assistant on Pi touch screen as shown in the picture below, we will have to install Chrome. Chromium is not part of the default Raspbian packages , which means we will have to run the following commands to work around this

wget -qO - http://bintray.com/user/downloadSubjectPublicKey?username=bintray | sudo apt-key add -
echo "deb http://dl.bintray.com/kusti8/chromium-rpi jessie main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install chromium-browser rpi-youtube -y