So, this is nothing new. I was looking for some kind of a case for my Raspberry Pi, and came across one that was made from Lego’s. And since Lego’s are the shit, I decided to get mine from my parents place, and build one. Only to find out that after years of never moving, they've disappeared. Luckily, I have an awesome wife that found a generic Lego kit online.
So now, I’m ready to begin...
In my need to organize everything, I put all the blocks
together to make it easier to find them. What I had forgotten as a kid, is that
new Lego’s don’t come apart easily once they’re put together. If you were anal
retentive, like I am, you may need to get a razor blade to separate them again.
Just be careful not to scratch them. Or cut yourself. (This is my only public
service announcement, so listen up!)
The kit I have came with a base for building on. It’s a little
big for the Pi, but I was planning on adding random stuff to the box anyway. I
started by getting an outline of the Pi, to see where openings are required for
the cables. The cables seem to come out of every end on the Raspberry Pi.
Something I wish they would have thought of when they designed it. (Maybe I’ll
see about moving them on my next mod.) Once I had an outline of the Pi, I found
that it does not sit flat. To fix this, I added a couple of supports. (The flat
red Lego’s in the picture.) In order to not crush the solder points, I set
these supports in very specific places.
Once this was done, I just built up the walls around the Pi.
Even with 405 pieces, this is harder than it sounds. (Unless you don’t care if
it fits nicely.) Again, all the cables are jutting out of every end. Even though
I’m not using the lower quality connections, I chose to not cover them up. I
also decided to add a window where the USB ports are, so I can easily get to
them if I ever need to. This was a good way to keep them accessible, without
leaving a huge hole in one end. It’s bad enough the Ethernet connection
requires such a large hole. I also decided I wanted access to the SD chip for
swapping. (I like the idea of booting whatever I want, just by changing out SD
cards.) I also added a couple of pieces to hold the Pi down. Once the walls
were tall enough to allow for it, I added pieces that just barely went
over pieces of the Pi that would not break if rattled around. Just be sure not to squish
it together too tight. You don’t want to crush any capacitors or solder points.
Once the walls were tall enough, I just added a roof. After
the roof, I was able to add some other random pieces for looks. The best part
about using Lego’s for this project? I can rebuild it over and over again. =)
As a side note, my Raspberry Pi is running RASPbmc. It streams media from MediaTomb off my Ubuntu server in the office. I'm thinking of setting up another SD card to boot into a gaming console. Any suggestions?
