back to article Raspberry Pi guys want you to go topless in the heat

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has revealed a new piece of hardware: the official Rasbperry Pi case. The main feature is the removable roof that to our mind either makes the Pi a convertible or lets it go topless, depending on your preferred level of innuendo. The Pi guys say they chose the design topping this tale after …

  1. 45RPM Silver badge

    Yawn. Yet another case which only pays lip service to expansion. So far the only really useful cases are the (marginally expandable) MediaPi and (difficult to get hold of) PlusBerry. What I want in a Raspberry Pi case is:

    Ease of purchasing

    A case which puts all the ports on the back of the unit

    Built in power

    Built in SATA and space for at least one hard disk. A second SATA and space for an optical drive would be nice.

    Room for a couple of expansion cards

    And yes, I'd be prepared to pay thirty or forty quid for it. Frankly, I'd settle for an easily available board to make it ITX compatible.

    1. Anonymous Custard

      Have a look at this one:

      https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/plusberry-pi-media-box-running-on-raspberry-pi#/story

      Doesn't quite hit all your targets (to do that I think you'd need a PC case), but does a fair amount of them. It's fully funded, currently in the final stages of production and is due to start shipping within a few weeks...

    2. John Robson Silver badge

      What I want...

      @45RPM:

      What you want isn't a raspberry pi then...

      The ports are where they are, there is no SATA.

      I'm sure you could pop it in an ITX case (getting you the various drive slots), add a USB HUB, and push the power in from the ITX PSU.

      You could even add a small HDMI extenstion cable and Cat5 extension cable...

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Stop

      "Frankly, I'd settle for an easily available board to make it ITX compatible."

      So why not buy and ITX system ad have done with it...sheeezzz.

      1. Bronek Kozicki
        Coat

        perhaps because he wants this ITX system to be driven by an ARM CPU? Just guessing.

        1. 45RPM Silver badge

          @Bronek

          'zackly. I want a relatively cheap, low power consumption, device for running RISCOS on.

          I can still see a use case for something like this running Linux though. Power consumption of an ARM based NAS is significantly lower than that of an Intel based system.

    4. Dan 55 Silver badge
      Happy

      Did you want a turbo button as well?

      1. Kane
        Trollface

        "Did you want a turbo button as well?"

        And Go Faster Stripes please!

    5. Nigel 11

      Built in SATA and space for at least one hard disk. A second SATA and space for an optical drive would be nice.

      Room for a couple of expansion cards

      And yes, I'd be prepared to pay thirty or forty quid for it. Frankly, I'd settle for an easily available board to make it ITX compatible.

      You don't get SATA and PCI interfaces from a case! You're describing a different platform.

      Are you aware that you can get an ITX format fanless Intel-x86 PC board with all you ask for, plus probably rather more CPU grunt, expandable RAM, etc. for £50ish? Gigabyte GA-J1800N-D2H. Built my home PC around this - a 100% solid-state PC, completely noiseless. Although to be fair this is around £200 by the time it's built into a full-blown PC, or around £100 for a bootable bare board.

      More Pi-like, there's the CubieBoard series with SATA and more RAM than a Pi. I've not used one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubieboard

      Cheapest linux system-in-a-box is a broadband router running OpenWRT or similar. I have a £17 Trendnet router (check the OpenWRT hardware compatibility list). Inside is a five-port fully VLAN-capable switch and double the RAM that most of them boast. Slightly dearer ones also have USB ports. Others cost under £10 for CPU, Lan and Wireless. Main drawback with routers is (usually) very small RAM capacity.

      1. 45RPM Silver badge

        @Nigel11

        When I said 'Room for a couple of expansion cards' I meant Raspberry Pi expansion cards - not PCI. Simple things like the RTC board and so forth. I wasn't very clear there, was I?

        As to SATA, there is already at least one case which offers this (Plusberry Pi), but it isn't easily available.

        There was also a board available in a very limited way which made the original Pi ITX compatible - with back panel and SATA.

        Using the Pi board as the core has the great advantage of allowing me to fiddle around with RISCOS whilst enjoying minimal power consumption.

        So those are my reasons. My objection to the 'official' case is that it does nothing that the other third party cases do already - so I can't really see the point. There's a lot of demand (just search the forums) for cases which will take a spinner internally. This isn't it.

        1. John Robson Silver badge

          @45RPM

          A case can't provide a SATA interface, it could include a USB/SATA converter, and potentially a powered hub as well..

          But USB has finite bandwidth, so you need some awareness of the requirements.

          Grab a MiniITX chassis, pop 5V from the PSU to the GPIO (or the USB header if you want), add a USB hub in a 3.5" drive bay and HDMI/Network extension cables to the rear.

          Seems like it would fulfill your criterion fairly easily.

          1. werdsmith Silver badge

            But USB has finite bandwidth,

            Very. The Pi has USB 2.

          2. 45RPM Silver badge

            @John

            That's just pedantry. Technically, a case can't provide any electronics. It's just a box. I know SATA would be provided via USB and therefore be rather slow. But I don't mind - I just want the flexibility to add more storage neatly. When I want plenty of computing power I don't use my Pi. When I use my Pi I don't worry too much about performance - but it'd be nice if it could all be a little neater.

            My dream case would be something like the Amiga 600's, but with an internal hard drive and an optical drive instead of the floppy.

            1. John Robson Silver badge

              @45RPM

              Of course it's pedantry ;) We are still on El Reg aren't we? ;)

              If you have an old Amiga 600 then rip it apart and put a Pi in. There are fairly easy ways to move ports around if you have a case with planety of space (I imagine that even a spectrum case would have enough space) with short extension cables. I know they're not all that cheap, but you probably only need the HDMI one - maybe a Cat5 if you need a wired network - maybe a 3.5mm audio cable. A powered USB hub will be needed for your SATA converter anyway, so that can be mounted near the HDMI output.

              I like the look of the old Sun Microsystems disk array cases, so I have a couple with miniITX systems in them. They might get replaced with a PI2 at some point (but they're not in use at the moment anyway...)

              But we're talking about "pet" projects now - rather than a mass production case. And aren't pet projects one of the main points of the Pi?

  2. werdsmith Silver badge

    Is that hole in the top meant to accommodate the small LCD touch panel that Raspberry Pi have been struggling to get through RF testing?

  3. John Tserkezis

    I was never comfortable with hot silicon. So I put heatsinks on the ones that do grunt, and a baby fan in the case. Cool as a cucumber now.

    I'm not sure if it actually needs it mind you, it might run happy hot, there's been a lot of discussion on it, but no reports of meltdowns... But like I said it always makes me nervous.

  4. AIBailey
    Happy

    Fascinating!

    Thanks for the link to the injection moulding story, I've actually learnt a lot this morning, and it's not even coffee time yet!

  5. Neil Barnes Silver badge
    Coat

    Can't help feeling

    it should have a little concertina fabric roof, like a 1960s Dormobile...

  6. This post has been deleted by its author

  7. Extra spicey vindaloo
    Joke

    But a Pi without a lid,

    Is a tarte surely?

  8. Jim 59

    Zeitgeist failure

    Injection moulded? Not 3D printed? You guys are so unhip it's a wonder your bums don't fall off.

    1. Nigel 11

      Re: Zeitgeist failure

      3D printing costs more and yields results less polished than the hype suggests. For one-off prototyping it's great, and it may have a good future for rarely-needed replacement parts. For mass production of anything except very small components, injection moulding wins hands-down.

      (Very small: well under a centimeter cubed, which a 3D printer can print in fairly large multiples per job)

  9. mathew42
    Thumb Up

    Very nice design. Only thing stopping me purchasing one now is the lack of a mounting point for a camera. I suspect one of the panels that clips on would be the perfect candidate for replacing with a camera mount version.

  10. cortland

    Not optional:

    http://rfemcdevelopment.eu/index.php/en/emc-emi-standards/en-55022-2010

  11. hplasm
    Linux

    Why the long decision process?

    Surely it can't be hard to choose between a gutted toaster and a hollowed out dead badger?

    apt-get coat...

    1. Preston Munchensonton
      Coat

      Re: Why the long decision process?

      Surely, given the topic at hand, this would require the use of "yum" instead of "aptitude"...

      1. hplasm
        Happy

        Re: Why the long decision process?

        yum toast, or yum dead-badger?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Why the long decision process?

      To be fair, you should be able to install Linux on the dead badger itself- no Pi required.

  12. Chris Evans

    Correction: two and a half year-long plastic hassle

    The first words in the official announcement are: "Two and a half years ago"

  13. Mike Perrin
    Meh

    Sorry, but...

    ... not in that colour. Yes, I know, but no.

    Just no.

  14. Daz555

    I'd like a case which has the right internal connectivity to move all the external ports to one side of the case. I have 3x Rpi in my house and the mess of wires from all angles bugs me.

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