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Related

Pi case reviews

recantha
recantha over 13 years ago

I’m going to start putting reviews of cases up on my website (www.recantha.co.uk). I’m currently writing my IP Adelt one. If anyone would like to share a review of this, or any other case, please let me know (mike@recantha.co.uk). All authors will be credited, obviously. :-)

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  • morgaine
    morgaine over 13 years ago

    A good review of Pi cases would probably be interesting material for the Element 14 Raspberry Pi Blog .  Once you're happy with the article on your website, perhaps you'd like to like to write up some version of it for our blog here too?

     

    The case I'm most waiting to appear in the UK is the Adafruit one , as I'm a big fan of transparent cases for boards that have LEDs and interfacing headers.  The main reference for Pi cases is on the wiki of course -- http://elinux.org/RPi_Cases , which doesn't yet include the acrylic Adafruit one.

     

    Good luck with your reviews! image

     

    Morgaine.

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  • recantha
    recantha over 13 years ago in reply to morgaine

    Yep, I was going to share it here - just realised there's a blog!

    The only place I'm not going to re-produce it is on the Foundation's website.

    Did make me laugh today when they featured the Pibow on the front page and then proceeded to spend half the (long) article vehemently saying that it was in _no_ way officially supported by the Foundation. Glad to see that all those pictures weren't promoting or supporting it in any way... Hmmm....

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  • johnbeetem
    johnbeetem over 13 years ago in reply to recantha

    I'm currently using an "open frame" non-case which holds my RasPi vertically and allows free air flow on both sides of the board, keeping her LAN and SoC chips from getting hot.  I hate to think how hot they'd get closed up inside that pretty little Pibow.  I'm looking forward to seeing photos of Pibows with a lovely rainbow soup of melted plastic around the LAN chip image

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  • recantha
    recantha over 13 years ago in reply to johnbeetem

    Hi John.

    Do you have a picture of your set-up?

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  • johnbeetem
    johnbeetem over 13 years ago in reply to recantha

    Michael Horne wrote:

     

    Hi John.

    Do you have a picture of your set-up?

    Not yet.  I'll put one up in a couple of days and let you know where.

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  • pjc123
    pjc123 over 13 years ago in reply to morgaine

    The Adafruit case design is a great idea, unfortunately it is made of very brittle plastic, and even following the detailed assembly instructions, I successfully assembled the case once, and after deciding to use individual wires on the GPIO instead of a ribbon cable, upon re-assembly one of the tiny assembly tabs broke.  I see that another person has multiple breaks in his/her case, having to crazy glue it back together.  I would not recommend this case.

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  • morgaine
    morgaine over 13 years ago in reply to johnbeetem

    As I've reported here in earlier threads, my Pi is at the upper end of what I consider to be a safe operating temperature --- aka. the LAN9512 is fricking hot. image

     

    I'm in two minds about what to do about this though.  If it were an expensive item, I'd almost certainly try to protect it from self-immolation with heatsinks or ventilation, just because that would safeguard my investment.  In this case though, the price of a rather poor meal is of no concern at all, so other considerations apply.  The first of these is what's best for the Pi community and the Pi's future.  (By "Pi community" I mean the zillions of people who have ordered or received a Pi and who believe in the goals, not Liz and her minions who show nothing but contempt for community except as meme marketting fodder.)

     

    What's best for the Pi community is obviously to highlight any problems with the Pi v1 board so that they can be fixed to make v2 better.  (Obvious to any engineer,  that is -- YMMV.)  I doubt that anyone could argue with that ... not even Liz, if one could get a word in edgeways before being banned.  (But of course one can't.)

     

    The real issue therefore becomes how to highlight what needs to be fixed with the LAN9512 device to improve Pi v2, and to whom it should be highlighted.  And that's a pretty interesting question.

     

    I haven't yet lost hope in the RPF engineers --- Liz isn't one, and JamesH doesn't behave as one and therefore isn't one.  The rest may be perfectly fine engineers, open to engineering feedback.  That leaves some room for hope.

     

    In addition to RPF, there is Element 14 / Farnell and RS / Allied.  Although they're mainly distributors, they have engineering deeply in their makeup, as well as a wealth of engineering skill and contacts at their disposal.  In comparison with either of them, RPF is a pretty sick joke.  This makes me wonder what the "partners" would do when their engineers recommend simple hardware remedies but they're blocked by an RPF that isn't interested in improvement.  I know what I would do, and it would result in sore RPF rear ends.

     

    What does this mean for my own little Pi from Farnell?  (It's on its lonesome because RS never got their game together for me.  I'm sure that RS are a great guys, in fact I know that they are from personal experience, but something in their process failed for Pi.)  I think it means that this Pi will remain overheating itself unless Farnell says to do something about it, or says to return it.  And if it's still red hot in month 11 of ownership, I'll ask them what they want done if it fails soon after ... because if they say "tough" then I'll get it replaced in month 11.  This is simple engineering feedback --- they need to know that there is a thermal design problem with Pi v1.

     

    So, I admire John's vertical board setup designed to improve cooling, and I admire the many people who have installed heatsinks on their chips, but I think that someone relevant needs to be told that there is a v1 thermal design issue as well.  The question is, who.

     

    Morgaine.

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  • fustini
    fustini over 13 years ago in reply to pjc123

    Sorry to hear that.  The "claws" are the most delicate part of the case, but the upside is there is no assembly hardware needed.  I'd suggest giving Adafruit support a shout as I've always found them quick to rectify problems.

     

    I have a Pi Box and found it to be an excellent case!  The laser-cut precision shines with perfectly sized openings for all the connectors and the laser-etched labels are a nice touch.

     

    I like how the top can come off for direct access to the GPIO and to accommodate stacking a daughter board like the Pi Plate:

    image

    I've now put the top back on and am prototyping via the ribbon cable through the slot (connected to their Pi Cobbler ribbon cable breakout board):

    image

    My co-workers who I recommended it too have all been very happy with the Pi Box as well.  At $15, I have to admit it is a bit of "luxury" item in comparison to the $35 price of the Pi.  I've seen a cheaper injection molded case, but it lacks the same level of sophistication.

     

    In summary, the Pi Box is precise, versatile enclosure that makes the Pi look real sharp!

     

    (update: I forgot to mention one of the reasons I dig Adafruit so much is their open-source nature.  The Pi Box design is on Thingiverse)

     

    (recantha: feel free to use any of this on your case review page)

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  • rhughes-uk
    rhughes-uk over 13 years ago in reply to johnbeetem

    If it gets too hot it'll probably Raspberry Ripple. image

     

    Seriously though I am now running the new Raspbian Debian image making use of the Floating Point hardware on the Pi. It seems to run considerably hotter to the touch. Just wondering if anyone else noticed a similar increase on the Raspbian Debian FP image?

     

    Ray (I know more transistors more heat)

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  • johnbeetem
    johnbeetem over 13 years ago in reply to rhughes-uk

    Ray Hughes wrote:

     

    ... I am now running the new Raspbian Debian image making use of the Floating Point hardware on the Pi. It seems to run considerably hotter to the touch. Just wondering if anyone else noticed a similar increase on the Raspbian Debian FP image?

    My SWAG is that if RasPi is running a lot faster with floating point hardware, then it means that before it was spending a lot of time executing floating-point operations in software subroutines.  These subroutines probably ran mostly in cache, which meant the soft FP RasPi was accessing DRAM less frequently.  The hard FP RasPi gets more done in the same amount of time, but probably accesses DRAM more frequently.  This heats up the DRAM chip, which is on top of the BCM2835 and is what you actually touch.

     

    Just my SWAG -- YMMV.

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