Scratch Build – In Progress der_george - sPIder Series

Here I am going to show you what I have been working on lately apart form Inky and 3D Printers

List of Requirements:

- Easy to build - for everybody
- Cheap
- Practical
- Small
- Cable management - important especially on a Pi as cables come out all sides.
- Mountable on VESA 100 ( kann easily screw onto small TVs or Desktop monitors

These things are for all parts of this series - yes parts - there are going to be different versions for different materials/tools/requirements.

Versions:

- sPIder - COSW
- sPIder - COSS
- sPIder - COGW
- sPIder - COGS
- sPIder - PRRR
- .... and a lot more..

Today I am going to show you the first version: - sPIder - COSW:

Here is the design in CAD:





From these I got my first drawings:



And cut out...



...and glued them to a piece of white acrylic using a pritstick.



Then I drilled the holes and milled the slits. but how do you mill slits if you don't have a mill? I just put a dremel milling bit into my Drill - it worked quite well. You just have to be very careful and have steady fingers.



Here is the result - not that bad for manual labor - but one day I need to get a mill with a coordinate table. That would save me heaps of time and good for my heart.



As you can see I fixed on the drawings with sellotape as the pritstick wasn't strong enough and it starting coming off where I had been cutting and drilling. After that I cut it out carfully with my jigsaw. On designing the sPIder Series I chose radii that could eaily be cut using a jigsaw without any problems - even with the cheapest.



and finished cutting out the first part.



and then the second one.



Now everything had to be filed and sanded - the slits were the worst parts by miles.



Now I just needed to add the threads



Then I had to clean it all up - didn't take any pictures of that

And then put it all together:

The needed parts:



Later I will add a Bill of Materials of the vitamins you need for the different versions. My parts were from rest-parts - the 25mm threaded spacers are from an old scanner, the small ones are mainboard spacers, the black screws are from a pc case (MS Tech taabar sin) the Velcro Cableties are from a PSU )I didn't use these after all - I used some black ones also from a PSU because they look nicer. The big M4 Screws are out of my screw box.

first of all I screwed in the spacers



If you use M3 instead of M2.5 like I did then you need to get the holes spot on. There is 0 room for error as the screws are so big that they slightly scrape the PCB wenn you push them through the holes. Nothing bad - just be careful.



(The wierdo pattern is from my cieling lights)
Then add the Raspberry Pi...



Then screw the top on and we are completed!





Now the first test on the Monitor:







By now you probably been asking yourself what the slits are for:



That is where the cable tie go



I put them like this so that so that I can tie up al the cables that come out of all the side and tie them together and feed them downwards together.





So this was the first part - the next part will follow. Don't know when - but when it's finished I will show you it.

Hope you liked a bit.

So long :0)

 

Nice cable management solution, very neat. Looking to make something similar myself as I'm trying to setup a XBMC machine for the little one to watch her films in her bedroom without messing with DVD's (TV is mounted high on the wall)

 

Yet another clever design from you. This is the first attempt at taming the cable octopus problem too.

For fixing the patterns, double-sided tape is your friend. -Right up to the moment you need to remove it, then you need naphtha to remove the gum.

 

Very nice and useful and well executed design! Great job!

 

Thanks! Yes, something somilar would probably be perfect - choosing between some films in XBMC is definatly easier than changing DVDs.

Thank you very much Cheapskate! Gotta try out the double sided tape - maybe only in the areas next to where it is going to be cut or drilled - might come off easier - we will see. Good idea.

Thanks a lot Azariel! Glad you like it!

Thanks for all the nice comments!

So long :0)

 

Genius!

 

Very nice, great solution for the spaghetti

 

Thanks Phame!

Thank you Meelobee! :0)

 

That is reeeaaaallly nice dude, simple and it really works, nice job!

 

Thanks mate!

Well… let’s carry on with the series. Today I am going to show you the COSS – it has been finished for a while but I just did’t get round to post it.

Well COSS, is really similar to the COSW, as you can tell from the name – just a bit easier.

The changes are:
- No more slits for the Velcro cable-ties. Therefore there are simple holes which can be drilled using any normal drill and can still fit normal cable-ties.
- The holes are placed in such a way that you can still access the Pi mounting points but also that the cable-ties are still in the right place.



I chose not to post any pictures here because they are nearly the same as on the COSW version.
The material I used was a piece of left over scrap aluminium but nearly all sheet materials can be used like wood, other metals or plastics like acrylic sheet.


Here it is all drilled and marked up ready to be cut out.

After cutting it out, filing and sanding the edges as well as cleaning it all up it was ready fort he picture with all the other parts I needed for the build.



You will need a PI and an SD-Card as well as a powersupply or powerplug (not pictured)
Also you will need four (M3) spacers which are at least 25mm long and four screws which fit into the ends to fix on the top plate. To mount the Pi I used screws instead of spacers because I wasn’t able to get any M2.5 ones. I screwed the screws through the back and slid some washers over it and secured them with a nut to achieve the right mounting height. To finish it off you will need another nut to secure the Pi. So all in all you will need two M2.5 screws, four M2.5 nuts, and six 2.7mm washers.

Here in detail:

First of all you need to screw the screws through the back.



Then put the washers and the nuts on.



Now the Pi can be put on top the nuts…



... to be then secured using the two left over nuts.



Now the four long spacers can be screwed into their holes.



And to finish it off the top is screwed on using the four remaining screws.
The result:





Someone in another Forum complained that the COSW version didn’t look very nice with the metal spacers and seeing as I wanted them for this COSS version I will also show another way of building a COSS or COSW. I will show you using my white acrylic version of the COSW:



Here I used black plastic tubing und some long black screws. The tubes can be found in plenty of different electronic products. You can also get them from Reichelt for a couple of cents each. The screws are from a Phobya radiator but you can also get them from Aquatuning in sets of four without having to by a whole rad. Now the screw is put through the top piece then the plastic tubing (spacer) is slid over the screw and the whole thing can then be screwed onto the bottom plate.

And completed it should look something like this:



One last picture showing both next to each other.



Next time round I will show you a slightly different Version. You have probably now all worked out where the difference in the last letter is.

So long :0)