RaspberryPi in Eurorack

On By ctonnp

This is basically just a 3D-printed frontpanel for a Raspberry Pi 4, with all necessary I/O brought to the front. The panel is comprised of 4 parts, 2 backsides and 2 fronts with text. The .stl and .gcode files are here below, if you want to try it yourself.

RasPi panels

On the main panel you have the usual five USB/LAN-ports (on the edge of the pcb), but in addition to this I also found place for the audio jack, HDMI connector, ON/OFF switch and a camera, all packed into a 7-HP Eurorack size.

  • The RasPi is mounted together with a fan/cooling unit “JoyIt RB-AlucaseP4+07FAN” .
  • The HDMI is a short adaptor, glued into the frontpanel.
  • ON/OFF-switch is put in series with the +5V wire form an angled USB-C cable that feeds the module from Eurorack 5V supply.
  • The audio-jack is a short female-to-male cable. The female connector is actually mounted through the panel, and the male part is plugged into the jack connector on the RasPi.
  • The camera is a cheap version (bitsandparts.nl) with the attached flat-cable plugged directly into one of the two ports on RasPi. Note that this has to be done before mounting the cooling unit.

These pictures will hopefully explain more than words:

 

Above: The main panel seen from both sides, extra I/O-panel removed

   

Above: Camera specs and photo

The large I/O-port header is also brought to the front through a folded female-to-female ribbon-cable to the small extra panel. Since I only had female connectors the one that goes to the female port on RasPi had to be fitted with as many male pins, and since this arrangement reverses every single pair of wires they all had to be soldered in reverse at the panel end. The connector is glued into the panel. Two LEDs are connected via resistors to +5V and +3V on the male pins. You can see it all here on this photo:

 

One of the ideas for bringing the I/O-port to the front, was to enable attachment of a small display. I chose the “Hyperpixel4” and printed a box with thin walls for it. The attached display is shown below, together with .stl and .gcode files:

display box

I also got a super tiny little keyboard to match the rest of the setup:

It is called “RII MINI X1 wireless keyboard with touchpad” on Amazon… and it works quite well.