[3d Modeling] Turning the SteemPi On End
There was something that kept nagging at me after I completed the SteemPi Full Case Redesign a couple of weeks ago. Putting a media device on your shelf has a classic history. Something just a little blocky, just a little high-tech – it's a perfectly reasonable design for a do-it-yourself steem specific media device.
But I found myself flipping through catalogs, walking through stores, and really looking at the industrial design of the current crop of household under-TV appliances, and I noticed a strange commonality.
They all have vertical designs! Probably as an effort to shrink the footprint of the device on the shelf, but there's a real affection for putting things in a layout which has them standing.
The full case redesign that I had submitted was – less than ideal in that sense. Oh, it was very nice. It certainly served the purpose. It was fit for task. And you could stick it on your shelf in a bunch of different ways, really – but it was missing something.
Late last night, I started tinkering around to try and find a solution that satisfied me.
The first challenge was to find a side that could be the bottom. The Raspberry Pi is well festooned with cables and ports. This makes deciding how to orient it somewhat difficult. No matter which way you put the thing, something is going to be emerging in a direction which is less than ideal.
Carefully looking at the case that I had put together, I noticed that one side had no ports. It just had a window. That was going to become the downward facing side.
Once reoriented, I had to decide what kind of broader foot I really wanted. There were a couple of problems with that. Firstly, the entire case was held together by four separate screws. Great for absolute security in a situation where you think the device is going to get knocked around a lot, but this is going to be sitting on a shelf underneath a TV. It really doesn't need four screws, so I removed the features for all but one, which seemed pretty sufficient. If you build one of these and feel that it's just too loose at the other end, a small dab of white glue at the upper corner ought to be more than enough to secure it.
Having removed to the screws on the bottom side, I wanted something relatively simple, so I just created a rectangular edge a bit wider than the bottom of the console and did a Loft from each side to the bottom of the plate. It matched up nicely enough, but it looked like things were just too solid down there. There was too much plastic. It was the matter of a moment to sketch a quick circle and extrude it the length of the base, making a nice, simple cut out.
Still, that left me with the vent slots on what was previously the bottom of the console. The bull's-eye-style look just wasn't doing it, and it wasn't immediately obvious what to do – until it was. Duh! Shoot the SteemPi logo on the top all the way through to the backplate and make a few slight changes to the design so that they weren't identical.
Excellent! That gets us a base and a backplate that looks like it has a harmonious design with the front. But something was still bugging me.
The original design was extremely hard-edged and linear. While it felt very much like a traditional Raspberry Pi case, it didn't feel as much like a "modern TV appliance" as I would like. Given the limitations of the SBC inside, I didn't have a whole lot of choices. The mounting points for Pi are pretty fixed. You need a fair amount of clearance above the chips for proper ventilation. The ports are in places that you can't move around.
What I ended up deciding was that having removed three of the screws, I could apply some fillets to some of the harder edges, smoothing things down so that the more organic, more modern feel came across a bit more aggressively.
So that's how I ended up here.
You'll see that I have done a number of renders in Fusion 360, some of which were done with translucent or transparent materials for the pure, electric joy of seeing what a true injection molded polycarbonate case would look like. It would, in fact, look pretty damn fine.
Hopefully you have enjoyed sharing some of my thought processes as regards this case redesign case redesign and if you have questions or comments, have no hesitation to drop them below.
As always, STL files for printing as well as STEP files for the parametric modelers in the audience who want to get their hands on the geometry directly are also stored in the GitHub repository.
References
Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors
Well, I do have a weakness for SBC projects. I wish I could profitably mine with raspberry :D
Yeah, the Pi is just not a serious mining machine. But it does so many other things really well that I can't hold the fact that it doesn't to something I just don't have the resources to do against it.
You should definitely check out the SteemPi project that I've linked to. The creator has done a pretty amazing job of creating a console that lives on the steem ecosystem. It may not be something that you need right now, but as tech toys go – is kind of cool.
What exactly does it do? I can already use steem on my PC, so what actual benefit is there to move to the Steampi?
Truthfully? It's just a gadget that acts like a combined media player and steem blockchain explorer which can be hooked up to a TV or cheap little display to basically be a sort of dedicated platform.
Is it a necessary part of your life? Absolutely not. That would be silly.
Is it a fun little thing that you can tinker with to learn more about the ecosystem and what's going on regarding the steem blockchain? Sure.
Don't look at me – I'm not a developer on the thing. I'm just a guy that enjoys doing 3D design and likes to tinker.
@Techtek is the go-to answer man on this thing. [grin]
If I were to do something with steem and raspberry, I would probably put a bot on it. Because bots are fun. :)
I suppose that depends entirely on what the bot is intended to do.
In a sense, a lot of the things that run on the SteemPi are "bots," in the sense that they act in an automated manner to inform you of activity on the blockchain. I don't think there are any things there that cause you to automatically engage with the blockchain, but there aren't a whole lot of open, broad projects to do that sort of thing – as far as I know.
I'm pretty sure that if you came up with something interesting there's a good chance you could get it onto the console.
Like I said, I've done my time in the code mines and, at best, I am far better inclined to be a project manager on something than a coder. I'm leaving that all the other people, much to my happiness.
I mean of course you can, you can basically use the raspberry as a low-cost server. As for bots I wonder what kind of bot I could create. There is already bucketloads of them and probably much better than I could make, but it would still be pretty cool learning how to make it.
Also it is kinda possible to mine in a sort of way. Storage mining is possible on raspberry. So burst, storj, sia or others that are coming in the future.
Hey @lextenebris I am @utopian-io. I have just upvoted you!
Achievements
Community-Driven Witness!
I am the first and only Steem Community-Driven Witness. Participate on Discord. Lets GROW TOGETHER!
Up-vote this comment to grow my power and help Open Source contributions like this one. Want to chat? Join me on Discord https://discord.gg/Pc8HG9x
Your contribution cannot be approved yet, because it is in the wrong category. The correct category for your post is
Graphics.See the Utopian Rules. Please edit your post to use the right category at this link, as shown below:
You can contact us on Discord.
[utopian-moderator]
Thank you for the contribution. It has been approved.
Unfortunately, this is the last work we could accept it like that. This does not really fit into any category we have and I believe that you made this post because I accepted the previous one. It was in the wrong category and I am sorry for the confusion.
Graphics contributions must be linked to repositories of projects they are meant for and not the repositories where the model files are.
I am again sorry for inconveniences but we cannot accept contributions like this one in the future as they do not meet the rule's requirements.
You can contact us on Discord.
[utopian-moderator]
For clarity, the content of this post is not about the graphical images which were generated, it's about the full 3D model which is located in the repository to which this points, in support of an open source project which resides on Utopian (SteemPi).
I felt it would be improper to put my content directly into that project because it's not my project, which is why this particular github repository is separated. But both of the case designs in here are intended for the SteemPi project.
Again – not graphics. Actual full 3D models for 3D printing cases for a SteemPi console itself.
I suppose if there's any objection, it should really be that there should be a space for these things attached to the SteemPi project, and I would be perfectly willing to accept that as the state of affairs. But that needs to be the argument put forth, for consistency's sake.
I appreciate that this contribution has been approved, but we still need to solve the larger problem. If not for this, for future things.
Yeah, we have had quite a discussion which category is suitable for this content. And at the moment, it does not fit the development category nor the graphics. The selected repository should be of the project the contribution is for. So as we agreed that this is intended for SteemPi, you should select its repository and insert the link to your files. If it was a development contribution, you would be required to provide merged pull request in the SteemPi repository.
But it still does not fit the categories as they are intended to be. There were suggestions for new categories but it did not receive enough votes in the public poll. Utopian is not ready for every kind of content yet.
If it were up to me, I would probably focus on a smaller number of broader categories, making it much easier to categorize things for the moderators, along with a certain understanding that open source projects and open source tools can work side-by-side with closed source materials, but I understand that the current establishment of Utopian emerged pretty much entirely from the software development side of the house and doesn't necessarily have a handle on all of the things that are "open source" related.
As an example that I was talking about to someone else, what about a tutorial which uses closed source software to target making assets for an open source game engine, but which the resulting game will be closed source? That's a perfectly reasonable workflow, and one that a lot of people could get significant use out of, but doesn't seem to fit into the current understanding of workflows that Utopian encompasses. Likewise, a tutorial for a closed source but freely available tool being used to advance an open source project which is not hosted on github? There is a lot of useful, important content which the structure of Utopian doesn't really have a way to grapple with, and yet would profit immensely from finding a way to integrate into the platform.
I appreciate the opportunity that you given me to talk about some of the things that seem to be a little problematic from my perspective as a creator. A tool like Utopian, that is a generalized mechanical means of establishing a community in the classic sense on the steem blockchain, is definitely something that we need to see more of and to see more widely used – but we need to be opening clear about the current limitations and why they are potentially seriously impeding doing some of the things that Utopian says they want to do.
Utopian is in the process of continuous development. Some of the questions you ask have been discussed before. It has been decided that there will be the polls for new changes, some of them doable in the short term and some of them in the long term.
Utopian supports only projects hosted on GitHub. It was decided by people that Utopian should not focus on other platforms in the near future. You are welcome to join the Discord server where all the poll results are public or read the posts by Utopian account.
Utopian Is mainly focused on developers with the possibilty of rewards for other kinds of contributions. The rewards have been recently temporary doubled/increased for developers.