Project14 | You Decide the Next Monthly Project Competition!

Another theme idea.

Project in a Tin. Altoids is a favourite but other tins are possible.

The Pi Zero and BeagleBone fit nicely in an Altiods tin. I wish the Pi 3 would fit in an Altoids tin.

We'll have to get someone to talk to the Altoids people to see if they'll make a packaging change

It would be nice if the RPi 3 came in a version that would fit in an Altoids Tin and also had the same uFL Antenna Connectors as the BeagleBone Black Wireless. This would be a great idea for anyone familiar with PCB design.

It would be nice if the RPi 3 came in a version that would fit in an Altoids Tin and also had the same uFL Antenna Connectors as the BeagleBone Black Wireless. This would be a great idea for anyone familiar with PCB design.

Well,  I believe the BeagleBone board design to fit in the Altoids Tin was intentional; I'm not so sure about the RasPi though.  However, you could use a Pi Zero which would fit nicely even with a screen.  Or, you could just go with a larger Altoids tin:

Or, just hack a regular Altoids tin to fit the RasPi 3

https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/4s32l0/pi3_box_made_from_altoids_tin/

I have already put a RPi Zero and the Adafruit PiTFT 2.2" 320x240 Display HAT in an Altoids tin with RetroPie.

  https://www.adafruit.com/product/2315

But I would very much like to see a version of of the RPi 3 that has the same PCB dimensions and uFL Antenna Connectors as the BeagleBone Black Wireless. The RPi 3 and BBB W already share the same Debian Linux based OS. There are quite a few variations of the BeagleBone that have been adapted for different applications, hopefully we will see this in future designs of the Raspberry Pi.

Oh dear... It would seem my level of sarcasm strayed a bit to the believable. Asking a company like Altoids to make a packaging change to support a secondary market, even one as impressive and influential as Raspberry Pi, is not a trivial request. A considerable amount of planning goes into the packaging; size of mints, paper liner dimensions, number and orientation of fill, material maximization (I still remember that calculus problem with height and width maximization), engineering of latching form for lid, etc, etc, etc.

It would be easier to change dimensions of the Raspberry Pi, but then you have all the issues with backward compatibility, and now all those cases that won't work with the new footprint (did that once with Pi 2). There are also all the engineering concerns just to redesign a board. I guess what I am saying is, I'll try not to make off hand comments like that in the future.  Though I would like to find out if it would be possible to upgrade the processor to a quad core on the zero w.

Jack