FWIW, I used CCTV enclosures with power supplies for a recent job. Gave me up to 18 x 12v fused psu points from a 20A source. Cabinet a bit small for your application, but worth looking at as a concept to see if bigger cabinets available. Very cheap.but solid and lockable cabinets.
Ebay. I've bought a few things like that purely for the metalwork. Which is very expensive new.
Think it appears in the Scientific and Technical section.
Steel deed boxes are available in various depths and can be reasonably priced.
Half an hour with a spray can if you want to change the colour from Deedbox Green to Hitech Grey.
Owain
Thanks for the suggestion - might be a little tight though...
I wondering whether some kind of 'switchbox' (probably has a better name
- the big steel things that you hang on walls with switchgear inside) might be an idea. Bags of space for power supplies (even fit a mains distribution block) - and I'm sure I've seen some with a transparent window. Bolt all the RPI's and the router down to an Ali panel, be tidy with tying up the wiring, and job's done... and you can see all the pretty lights through the 'window'.
'Wall mount enclosure' seems to be the phrase... Thanks Adrian
It's a proprietary system - 6+1 old winxp boxes, and one running NT Server. Very expensive applications software - completely OTT for what the client's actually doing with it. And about 8 years old.
Adrian
Thanks - I was thinking along similar lines - wall-mount enclosures.... perhaps? Adrian
Ah - thanks - I'll go have a look Adrian
DIN Rail Enclosure
And you can get DIN rail mountings for Raspis
If it's in a locked equipment room, a wall mount DIN rail with those lined up and some cable tray below to tidy the wires. DIN mount power supply too.
Owain
I was looking at using RPi 3's, and with these din rail mountings (neat though they are) the video and power connectors come out in-line with the din rail - so you'd need to leave an amount of space in-between the rail-mounted modules so you could get the power & hdmi cables in.
They'd be ideal for a system with one or two RPi's - but with potentially seven of them, there's a lot of 'in-between' space taken up with connectors & cables.
If they were mounted on a sheet of ali, in a layout like this
X Y X Y X Y
With the 'Y' Pi's rotated 180-degrees to the 'X' Pi's, then cables can be routed to take a bit less space - even more-so if right-angled HDMI extension leads can be found....
Agreed - doesn't need to look 'consumer-pretty', I'll settle for 'industrial-tidy'
Thanks Adrian
And some nice braid-effect ethernet cables will add that hipster touch :-)
Owain
- Which'll be completely wasted, due to it being in the locked cupboard/store! You'll have me fitting blue led case-lights next.....
As I say - the appearance isn't the biggest issue - what we're aiming for is a very simple-to-operate system, which doesn't rely on 8 x
10-year-old XP / NT pc's all deciding to play nice together.User interaction will be confined to a Big Switch - labelled 'On / Off'!
- at least, this is the plan...
Thanks Adrian
Have you thought about a single reasonably modernm 64 but PC crammed with RAM running 8 virtual XPs?
What actually do these boxes do?
Always a Good Plan
And with potentially 6 video cards or an external video scaler?
I guess it's piwall or similar. One pushes the video stream out over a network, and the other 6 receive the video stream, decode it, and put out the appropriate 1/6th of the video to the external monitor.
Owain
aah..that seems sensible
Not for very long
Currently - the network runs a full-featured transport/navigation simulator - which is running in a 'crippled' or 'newsreel' mode - so the users can't screw it up. (All user input is disabled - simply by unplugging the cables!)
Plan is to achieve something very similar, which just 'plays' video of the navigation and control screens, synchronised across three large-screen monitors and three smaller monitors.
There are some who feel that even this is allowing two much user input! Adrian
That's where it starts to get complicated / expensive....
Got it in one! There's also a paid-for solution that's similar - need to do some detailed interrogation of the suppliers before plumping for one or the other.
That's the boys. Adrian
Hope so.... a great deal more sensible than the current system, anyway!
Current system is at the stage (or age) where bits keep dropping off, duff sectors on hard drives & etc - and is a nightmare to keep running...
Supplier of the original system is (quite reasonably) not very enthusiastic about supporting this old system - and would probably like to sell the client a brand new installation. Price tag probably in the ?25k region.....
so if we can devise something cheaper / more reliable etc then we'll all be on to a winner!
Thanks Adrian
My pi inventress prints her own enclosures on a £500 3D printer
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