15.4.2020
Creating another box for the Raspberry Pi may seem like carrying owls to Athens. Sites like Thingiverse are full of boxes for Raspberry, just choose. But despite the time I spent looking for a suitable box, I couldn't find one that would suit my needs. Some boxes are for RPi 3, some even for older models. Other boxes don't have cooling solved well. I don't like when a warning blinks on my screen and the smell of melting PLA spreads through the room. Other boxes, on the other hand, deal with cooling very well — with a giant hole for the fan. Another box breaks very often when I used it. I even found a box in which my SD card broke and when I tried to get the Rpi out of the box, I ripped off the whole SD card slot — fortunatelly I can work with a soldering iron! And is it my fault that I forgot to pull out the SD card when I tried to remove the Raspberry Pi from the box? No — I consider it a structural defect of the box.
So I was looking for a box that could hold a small cooler for easy cooling, the box which will not destroy Raspberry or SD cards, the box which will not break or melt and which one that can be easily mounted on the back of the monitor.
The best box I could find is this: RPishop.cz: Zonepi krabička pro Raspberry Pi 4B. However, I will not buy a box if I have my own 3D printer! Unfortunatelly, there are no sources or STL files available for the box on Rpishop.cz.
So i picked a mouse and started FreeCad and drew my own box during one gloomy quarantine afternoon. During the the second gloomy quarantine afternoon I adjusted the box to its final form, added a VESA holder and legs and I sent the box to the printer.
I personally do not have a very high opinion of the Raspberry Pi. Its priorities are the price and performance. I have nothing against the price or performance, but the SD card degrades Rpi to a second category computer. I cannot send Rpi to the other end of world with the hope that in the event of an SD card crash, someone will be able do disassemble the device, replace the SD card and complete the device again.
On the other hand, CPU and GPU performance, price and availability of information make RPi great platform for devices where dependence on the SD card is not a problem. For Robe for example, we develop a software for production tracing: every operator in the workshop has a touch screen monitor with RPi in front of him and a QR code reader. During the assembly process, every component is read with QR code reader and saved to database. It is known about each product, when and who created it, what kind components were used, who supplied which component, and so on. The output is detailed a curriculum vitae of each product leaving the factory gates. Raspberry Pi is used in place of a cheap and economical computer. Of course, the data are stored in a database server.
