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.
While I’ve written for Tindie for several years now, and at the same time I’ve helped host The Creativity Podcast: Where Art and Engineering collide. In our latest episode, we interview none other than head Tindarian, Jasmine Brackett.
She of course answers obligatory question of “What is Tindie?” for the audience, and talks about selling on the platform in general. Specifically, we delve down on the question of how do you keep things in stock without overbuying? Jasmine has a few ideas on the subject, though there’s definitely no one-size-fits-all answer. One important tip that she points out is that at some point items on the wait list get “cold.” In other words, people eventually move on to other ideas, especially if it’s been quite some time. So be sure to restock if you’re out!
I myself have finally gotten into actually selling some products on this platform. While some have sold little to no volume–which isn’t an issue per Tindie’s nonexistent listing fee–my EZ Fan2 Raspberry Pi fan control board has become modestly popular. Keeping them appropriately in stock has been quite the learning experience, which was actually a lot of the inspiration for this episode.
I even half joking that selling on Tindie should be part of a college business course. Jasmine then revealed that she’s actually seen a number of the same things for sale, which she finally realized was a part of some some sort of educational project. I say that’s a great idea, and hopefully the participants got something important out of it!
The show’s other host, Pat Regan, also runs a store on Tindie, and lists items like his Breadboard Spring Vise. While it is quite clever, he notes on the listing that you should just print one yourself. As far as I know, he was never a salesman. He also lists a cooling fan duct made out of carbon fiber. While it’s probably overkill, who can resist that kind of geek-chic? Probably not anyone reading this article.
Our other guest for the show was Kenny Stier, who owns Cloudfree.shop. His company deals in Tasmota-flashed IoT devices, which allow you to maintain local (i.e. cloud free) control without the hassle of flashing things yourself. I’ve been thrilled with the four switches that I bought, but since that time had some challenges keeping things in stock. Between the four of us, it turned out to be a great conversation.
You can see the whole show in the YouTube video below. The show is also available via SoundCloud on iTunes if you prefer the audio-only version, and we have quite a few other interesting guests in the show’s back catalog if you’d like to poke around!
Ezra Spencer of the Mixed Signal makes all manner of interesting audio devices, and for his latest video he decided to use an EZ Fan2 transistor breakout board purchased from Tindie! This tiny board–which I actually designed and sell–was originally meant as an “EZ” way to control cooling fans using a Raspberry Pi. In reality they can be used with small loads that don’t exceed the MMBT2222A transistor’s limitations and cooling needs.
Ezra decided to use this device when attempting to construct a custom 3D-printed speaker. His design, however, turned out to work better as an audio exciter–a device that sticks on to another surface and uses it as the speaker cone. Here coils are wound around a fixed base, and a magnet is attached to the flat speaker/exciter surface. This is sort of the inverse of most modern speakers, which instead place the magnet on the base and the coils on the vibrating cone.
To excite this contraption, Ezra employed the EZ Fan2 to simplify its wiring. He notes that he can “pretty much just throw it inline with the wiring harness and not have to worry about it too much.” It’s a fun little project, and fits in nicely with his other robo-musical builds. Be sure to check out this experiment in the video below, and you can peruse his channel for much more robo-audio exploration.
Of course, this certainly isn’t the only interesting project made using Tindie-sourced parts. We’d love to feature more builds, so feel free to ping us on Twitter @tindie with your ideas, or you can find me @JeremySCook.
It’s hard to beat the ease-of-use and small size of the Arduino Nano for simple tasks, despite the availability of newer and more advanced boards. I’ve used the Nano a wide range of scenarios, but, as with the Uno and many other similar boards, all too often you’re left needing “just one more” ground or power pin to avoid a jumble of wires.
To take care of this once and for all(?), along with a few other features on my wish list, I designed the “grounduino.” This breakout board features five additional ground pins, along with five +5V pins, and four +3.3V pins. Optionally, there’s space for a capacitor, which would be especially useful when dealing with programmable LEDs–per Adafruit’s NeoPixel Überguide.
Additionally, the board is designed to accommodate screw terminals for the extra and standard Nano connections. Notably, without a bit of “creative” component bending you’ll have to choose between 3.3V screw terminals and a capacitor, though in a pinch you could certainly attach the cap’ elsewhere.
Mounting options include using either a 3mm screw/standoff, or the holes can accommodate 6-32 screws as well. It’s also possible to use it with a DIN rail adapter, which would be a convenient “snap-on” option in some situations.
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