photos

 

booting Debian...


I built a plywood "chassis" (bottom and back panels), with finished pine front panel.  Black steel top cover is scavenged from some old piece of audio or video equipment.


Here you can see the poplar reinforcement beam I had to fit into the metal cover, so that it would carry the weight of a big monitor on top without bending excessively.


Each button presses one of the microswitches, which ground the GPIO lines which are otherwise pulled high to 3.3v, using the 2.2k resistors visible in the foreground.

The boards holding the red & blue LEDs can be seen at the top, spaced in between the three button assemblies.  The LEDs shine upon the paper liners, which are visible from the front through the wide gaps around each button shape.  This forms a gradient of diffuse purple light, coming through the cracks.


You can see the folded sheet-aluminum heatsink which is superglued to the top of Pi CPU chip.  Not exactly "up to code", but gets rid of the heat pretty effectively.


The 5V power cable and HDMI cable are clamped down with the wood block before exiting the case.  The USB data stick is accessible through the opening in the back.

Instead of using a 40-pin ribbon cable connector, I have simply soldered the wires to the back of the Pi circuit board.  Secure, as well as expedient!  And no harm done to the connector on the topside.

The little piece of paper towel duck-taped in front of one of the blue LEDs, is to just spread the light out a little bit differently in that area: some visual "tuning".



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