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Raspberry Pi case (with Camera!)

Raspberry Pi with Camera

I really like the Stacking Pi Case and I’ve laser cut a bunch of them at Milwaukee Makerspace, including the one I used for my Radio Milwaukee Radio, but when I got a Raspberry Pi Camera, there was no easy way to include it…

Raspberry Pi with Camera

I ended up making a derivative of the Stacking Pi Case and calling it the Raspberry Pi Case (with Camera) because, that’s what it is. I just made the Stacking Case taller and added in some holes to mount the camera.

Raspberry Pi with Camera

So if you’ve got a Raspberry Pi and Camera Module, this case might do well for you, since it’ll hold them both. Grab it from Thingiverse!

I’ll get into what I’m doing with this thing in a future post… obviously it will be related to images, time lapses, web stuff, etc.

Oh, and if you’re wondering why the top of the case is purple, it’s due to some crazy experiment I did with dying wood last time I dyed a bunch of t-shirts. And yes, you can totally dye wood.

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Major Treat

Ian

If you know me, you know I almost never share YouTube videos… probably because 98% of them are total crap, but sometimes through spelunking or some other method, like tips from a friend, you discover something amazing. This video of Ian MacKaye speaking at the Library of Congress is one of those amazing things.

If you know me, you might watch this and thing many of the things he talks about are familiar. If you don’t know me, watch this and you may get some insight into who I am. Ian touches on things I’ve been involved with for over 25 years (and continue to be involved with.)

Yeah, it’s long, but it’s worth it. I actually ended up transcoding it to audio and listening in the car, but hey, next time you want to watch some crappy movie or an award show, skip it and watch this instead. If you care about history, culture, art, music, documentation and preservation… It’s important. (Parts of it are also pretty funny.)

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Meetupery Grand Opening

The Meetupery

The Meetupery is a new co-working and makerspace in Sussex, Wisconsin. I was invited to talk about Milwaukee Makerspace for their Grand Opening.

Here’s my slides. They aren’t quite as exciting without my talk, but they may prove interesting.

It’s also on Speaker Deck.

If you’d like me to speak about makerspaces (or Milwaukee Makerspace in particular) get in touch with me.

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Intelligence Choices

Mushy Soup

I think intelligent people have two choices:

1. Take advantage of people who are less intelligent than they are and profit from them.

2. Teach people who are less intelligent than they are and help them.

Not that the two things are mutually exclusive, mind you. You could certainly do #2 and also make a profit, though that may not be taking advantage of people.

Hmmm.

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Foot Fixing

Projection Screen

With the recent move of Bucketworks, Milwaukee Makerspace found a (slightly damaged) large projection screen in its possession (which you can see in the photo above.) So for the recent Fix It Milwaukee event, I went to work trying to repair it.

Notes

I started by getting out the digital calipers and making some measurements, as well as sketching some views on paper and writing down the dimensions. (I guess all those years of Drafting classes paid off!)

OpenSCAD

Modeling this in OpenSCAD was a little tricky, only because I often get in over my head in OpenSCAD. It’s a fun challenge though… Some people play video games, I like trying to model difficult objects.

G-Code

Because my primary goal with the first print was to do a test fit, I used only a 10% infill. I started the print at 9pm and didn’t want to stay up too late to let it finish. (Yeah, in theory the hot bits should all cool down when a print is done, but RepRaps do start on fire occasionally, so if I can avoid leaving it on all night long, I will.)

3D Print

It definitely looked how I imagined it should look. I did not model the holes for the pins, as I figured I could do that later, or just drill them out. Again, my main goal was to test the fit of the Aluminum pole into the hole.

Foot

The Aluminum pole fit great! It fit so well in fact, that I couldn’t get it out, and resorted to breaking it apart. Snug is good, but too snug is not good. I’ll increase the size a bit and try again. It might actually be good to have a snug fit and avoid the pins for the replacement. Once I get the hole right I’ll do a print with more than 10% infill, which might be strong enough to not break apart.

Oh, and since I did this at Milwaukee Makerspace where we like to over-engineer things, I had at least two people tell me we could easily cast these in Aluminum. :)