I have been waiting for a EON type case for the Raspberry PI 5, and have decided to roll my own. I picked up a Radxa Penta Hat, some SSD’s and am in the middle of designing a case for it. The case will be cylindrical, have a fan at the top, pulling air from the bottom.
Schedule
I have the case designed, and have printed the bottom part, mounted the PI and and running diagnostics etc.
Next up, is printing the case body (being done as I type). I will make sure that fits, and when it all works continue to the case top.
Print case top
Print feet (out of TPU, a flexible material).
When I have these steps, I will post a link to the project and make it available to anyone.
Case V1,0 is functional! However it needed a few updates:
Modified case to handle a 80mm fan. I picked up a Noctua NF-A8 5V PWM fan
Added a MicroSD access panel to the bottom. I may need to modify this as it is a little more difficult to insert the card than I wanted. (But then how often is this done when the system is operating well.
Modified the top for more exhaust flow, printing that now.
Software
Not really sure the PWM fan is needed, as running at 100% is very quiet.
NOTE: The Noctua fans are so quiet… I’m thinking about changing fans on other systems.
Putting together a build tutorial, and getting the STL files setup.
Used rpi-eeprom-config to modify the power consumption when off:
Need to build in a power button (or access to the power button).
Create light ports for the SSD’s. There are blue LED’s on the radxa board that light up when on, and flicker when used. I was thinking about building light pipes to move the indicators around.
Add LED’s to the case
Write up all the part I used to build this up (I extended the GPIO connections to give the PI a little more head room for heat dissipation.)
Hope to have .STL files for V1.1 available with a week or two.