[Pi IoT] Alarm Clock #15: Finished Enclosure

13 Aug 2016

Sides
Back
Top
Bottom
Files

In my previous post, I showed you the start of the enclosure: the front panel. I have since then been working on the rest of the enclosure, trying to figure out which style to go for, one piece at the time. I'm a software guy, not a product designer (or a wood worker for that matter), but I enjoy experimenting and giving projects a finished look

So without further ado, I present to you the completed Pi IoT Alarm Clock enclosure in animated GIF form:

Of course, a full demo of its features will be made, but for now, let's focus on the enclosure itself. I hope you like what I've done with it. There are some imperfections, but overall, I'm very happy with the way it turned out!

Sides

Continuing to work with the same board the front panel was made of, I made two hollowed out side pieces. The first piece houses a speaker which sits comfortably inside the hollowed out space, with just enough tension to keep it in place. The other side remains hollow, providing access to the USB microphone of the Raspberry Pi. The more the hardware components are housed inside the walls of the enclosure, the more space is left in the center for wiring and easy access to the Raspberry Pi itself.

Back

The back panel was made in the same style as the front one. A piece of acrylic is glued in the back of the piece, and a hole was made to insert a power connector. Inside, the power input is split to power the Raspberry Pi, audio amplifier and the displays.

Top

There were some difficulties making the top. The first one is that the board was 18mm thick. Slapping almost 2cm on top (and later bottom) of the from would render the build way too bulky. Using a router, I was able to slim down the piece to a height of approximately 5mm.Needless to say that looked a lot better, but it did make the piece more fragile as well, as can be seen in the middle picture. After glueing it back together using wood glue and attaching the acrylic, the piece became more solid and it was as if it never broke in the first place. The top piece was then glued to the frame (front, sides, back) and a bit of wood filler was used to mask imperfections.

Bottom

Finally, the bottom part was created (just today!). It is made such that the rest of the frame slides on top of it, with enough tension to keep everything in place. The Raspberry Pi 3 will be mounted on that piece, allowing easy access in case of maintenance. As a finishing touch, transparent rubber feet have been added to the bottom side, preventing the enclosure from slipping, while slightly elevating it.

Files

Well, not sure if these can be called files, but here are the links to the different parts created in Easel. If you are using Easel, you can clone my parts and modify them as you please:

That's it! It's been a fun week of experimenting and figuring out how to be put everything together. Stay tuned for the next post, the end of the challenge is nearing rapidly!