Category Archives: Computer Hardware

From case mods to system builds – covering anything related to computer hardware projects.

Putting the Raspberry Pi to Use

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After countless months just sitting in my closet, I have finally found a practical use for my Raspberry Pi. I made a previous post about making a power box for it, and I finally decided to finish it. The box itself was all wired and basically set to go but after sanding it, I never painted it. Well the paint is (finally) drying on it as I type this.

Before doing that however, I hooked it up and began to configure some software for it. After installing the newest version of Raspbian (Debian), I took to installing PHP, Apache, MySQL, and Mantis Bug Tracker; the later being the most important. I’ve been considering bug tracking solutions for a while now, but popular ones such as Jira are just too expensive and the WordPress plugin was a bit too simplistic. Finally comparing Mantis to Bugzilla, I decided to go the Mantis route.

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Raspberry Pi Power Box

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Upon receiving my Raspberry Pi, I immediately got all sorts of ideas as to how I could implement it in to a fun project. My original plan was to build a case out of acrylic and implement a keyboard on to the top of it, similar to a Commodore 64. However since I have no access to tools capable of cutting acrylic correctly (and I don’t want to pay to have it laser cut), I scrapped that idea.

Next I thought I could modify an enclosure to house it and a USB hub together. I picked up a project box from Radio Shack after figuring out how much space I would need and proceeded to work with it. I eventually found it far more difficult than once though. Primarily due to having to re-route all of the various I/O ports from every side on the Raspberry Pi to a single side on the box. I knew I could get the cables and ports necessary to do so, but that would really cramp the inside of the box. In addition, having to dremel openings for all of that as well as the USB hub itself was a task I just did not want to do.

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