Reuse of old cases from obsolete electonics for Pi

In a DVD recorder: often yes. In a DVD player: usually no.

I have a DVD recorder that consists of a standard IDE DVD drive, a reasonably standard smps that outputs 5 and 12v, and a special board that does all the digital magic.

Not as convenient as you would like, a USB DVD drive would be better. You can find that in laptops. Of couse you can use a USB->IDE gadget.

DVD players are often built completely around dedicated stuff.

I have a friend who used a bubble bath container that was in the form of a Dalek to house his Pi. The ear like protusions on the head are LEDs which light up to indicate something or other.

mark

One of the nice things about the RPi is its diminutive stature - why would you want to put it in a case that's big enough for an ITX PC? Stealth cases can be fun projects, but for RPi a VHS cassette is a bit on the large side.

He might have a point. If his project is saleable a 1U 19in rack mount form-factor will provide more profit than an Adafruit box dangling from the customers switch by a patch lead.

Not if the product is domestic or mobile.

One can go to extremes. See this...all it has inside is an RPi...

But ripping the guts out of a dvd player you could use the box for a pi + psu + hub. I'm assuming its one of the small ones and not something like my old Philips which is the size of a VHS recorder.

But an old set top box might be better. It will already have a PSU that should be suitable

Nothing is impossible but whatever you do it will probably look home made! I notice that many dvd players actually look like normal drives and so you could be onto something, but of course dvds do not do hd currently only blue ray do. HDDVD is now a dead format and few if any common machines used it.

Brian

Ooh! I've got one of those (my son's you understand). I don;t think the bubble bath came with LEDs though.

Newer DVD players with HDMI connections tend to upscale the video to HD quite well (which I think is one reason BluRay has not completely dominated the market).

So upgrading would be from SCART to HDMI.

Plus a fully functioning networked computer a well :-)

Cheers

Dave R

I think the idea is that they are installed by the pi user.

mark

As long as it doesn't start yelling EXTERMINATE, that sounds cool.

"What happened to the Dalek?" "It died."

OLD electronics such as modems were best for that: sturdy metal cases and standard voltages on hefty power supplies (often internal: no wall cubes).

Doesn't the Pi come with a PSU? I seem to recollect getting one with the device, I also got one with the USB hub which backpowers the Pi!

Anyway at £4-00 or so, a dedicated box isn,t going to break the bank. I just wish I had gone for one before I dropped a monitor on my board.

AB

Only as an extra - it doesn't even come with a micro-USB cable as standard.