Transcript:
Today I’m going to be showing you how to make your own desktop case for a raspberry Pi 4 which looks like a mini desktop PC. The body of the case is 3d printed and it has clear acrylic sides So that you’re able to see into it. I’ve used an ice tower to cool the CPU but mounted the fan onto the side of the case, rather than on the Heatsink. I’ve also included an OLED display on the front of the case, which displays the Pi’s RP address and some stats like the CPU and memory usage and CPU temperature. If you’d like to build your own case, I’ve linked a guide with all the print files, templates and code in the video. [MUSIC] description. I designed this case for Raspberry Pi 4 models. You’ll also need to get an ice tower and a small RTC OLED display. I’ve put links to the components You’ll need in the video description. I started out by designing a 3d printed body of the case, which I did in Tinkercad. I positioned the Raspberry Pi Within the case. So the USB and ethernet ports are available through the front of the case and the power HDMI and audio ports are accessed through the acrylic side panel. The OLED display is positioned on the front of the case above the ports. The pi is mounted onto the brass standoffs, which came with the arse tower. I don’t remove the SD card in the back of the pie very often, so I didn’t add a cutout for it. If you do then just add a circular cutout to the case at the back, so you can still access it. [MUSIC] [Music] I printed out the case using black PLA with a 0.2 millimeter layer height and a 15 infill. I also added print supports for the cutouts for the display and ports on the front. [MUSIC] Let’s mount the raspberry Pi. In the case, start by screwing the brass standoffs into the holes in the base. I’ve just changed the orientation of the screws and standoff mounts supplied with the arch tower, so they screw straight into the bottom of the case and don’t require any through holes. [MUSIC] Next we need to remove the fan from the US. Tower so that we can attach it to the acrylic side panel. [MUSIC] add the support brackets for the ice tower. [MUSIC] [Music] put the pine to position and then use the second set of brass standards to secure it. Now finish installing the arc tile using the heatsink tape and the remaining screws. Now let’s install the OLED display onto the front panel. You might need a flexible shaft or 90 degree screwdriver to tighten the screw, which holds the display clamp in place. [MUSIC] Now we just need to prepare the wiring to the OLED display. You’ll need to make four connections to your gpio. Opens two for the power and two for communication. I made up the short connector cable using some Dupont connectors and some ribbon cable. You can also use some female pin header strips or female breadboard jumpers to connect the display to the part. Now let’s make up the acrylic sides. I positioned a block in the case roughly where the ass tower heatsink is going to be so that the holes for the fan are in the correct place. I then exported the side profile of the case and heatsink to open up an inkscape. I started with the fan side. We can remove the inside edge profile as we only need the outline of the case and the screw holes. We also need to add a hole for the fan and the four surrounding holes for the fan screws next. I created a mirror of the fan side for the exhaust side and drew a hexagon pattern for the exhaust air flow. If you’re not going to be laser cutting the sides and you’re cutting them out by hand, you may want to replace these holes with circular drilled holes in the same area. Lastly, we need to add the cutouts for the ports along the side of the raspberry. Pi now let’s get the sides cut out. I used two millimeter clear acrylic for the side panels, you can use a colored tinted or opaque acrylic as well. If you’d like [Music] to mount the fan onto the side panel, you’ll need to place some m3 nuts into the pockets by the screw holes. These are quite tight, so you don’t need to use a spanner to hold them in place while you tighten the screws, screw the side panel onto the 3d printed case using four m3 hex head machine. [MUSIC] screws now plug the fan into the five volt supply on the par and then install the other side panel. That’s it, the case is now complete. We just need to get the OLED display. [MUSIC] working to get the display working? We need to run a python script, so you’ll need to boot up your path first. The Raspberry Pi communicates with the display using ITC communication. So you’ll need to make sure that this is enabled in your preferences. If you’re unsure on how to do this, there’s a step-by-step guide linked in the video description. The script is mostly based on one of the example scripts in the adafruit python Library for early display modules with a few minor changes to add the CPU temperature and change the format of the display. Now reboot the part to automatically run the script and you should see the stats shown on the OLED display. [MUSIC] Let me know what you think of this case and what you do differently in the comment section [Music]. Thanks for watching. Please remember to like this video if you enjoyed it and subscribe for more tech and electronics projects, tutorials and [Music] reviews.