Realizator wrote: ↑Mon Feb 15, 2021 8:23 pm
Wow, Rigsson, what a brutal bullet-proof design!
I'm curious, what is the use case for this extra-robust design?
The design just evolved over the build, so I'll just put down my thoughts and hope it's useful to you & others here.
I'm a cyclist as well as an amateur photographer so I occasionally get out on to some of our local trails on photo expeditions, both hiking and cycling. Because (in some cases) of the rugged terrain here in the Arizona desert, I wanted to cover a couple points in the build.
1) Internal battery - I didn't want to have a cable running to a pocket or other carrier that might snag.
2) Viewscreen or viewfinder - Same reasoning. I didn't want to be juggling the camera in one hand and a phone in the other while trying to line up a shot. Just begging for either one to slip out of my hand and bounce off a rock.
3) Comfortable fit in the hand - again to reduce the chance of an accident.
I looked at some different project boxes but wasn't able to find one that was both large enough for a battery & screen and also fit my grip. I looked at 3d printing a custom case but our local print labs are either closed or have restricted access because of the corona virus. I have a collection of small cases I had set aside for future use and while sorting through them I came across this old manual a/b switch for parallel printers that looked like it might be close to the right size. So I opened it up, pulled out the old rotary switch & DB25 connectors and did a test fit that showed it should work.
Over a couple weekends I drilled mounting holes for the power toggles, the various standoffs for the circuit boards, an opening for the screen, etc. The panel mount USB extensions fit into one of the openings from the DB25 sockets. I also added a Zero4u USB hub because I needed 3 ports instead of the 2 on the pi board. The only issue was routing the cables but that came together eventually.
If it's of interest, the case is roughly 5 1/8 x 7 1/4 x 2 1/4 inches. Call it 130mmx185mmx55mm.
