Printed circuit boards are, one might argue, for creating electrical circuits. However, with low-cost, high-quality suppliers just a few clicks away, using them as structural elements isn’t that far-fetched of an idea. As a novel way to “protec” your Raspberry Pi 4, I designed the JC Pi Protec Raspberry Pi Enclosure, made primarily out of PCB material.
The bottom section of the device features a rather plain base PCB, onto which rubber feet can be attached to keep it from sliding around. Screw holes are also provided, and a DIN rail mounting kit is available for industrial-style mounting.
The top cover comes in two flavors. Both have cutouts for fan mounting, and the GPIO pins are printed on the silk screen for easy identification (which has proven to be quite handy). The Smooth Top PCB option has a blank space next to the USB/Ethernet ports, and the Proto Top option instead features a small perfboard area in this section.
While this rather limited prototyping area isn’t big enough for everything, as seen in the video below it can be great for simple tasks like adding a few indicator LEDs to your design. Also featured in the video is my EZ Fan 2 board, which makes it easy to control a cooling fan or other small load with the Raspberry Pi GPIO pins.
