rackmount case

Since even a 1U case should accommodate many Pi's, such a thing would likely be a specialty item.

-michael - NadaNet 3.1 and AppleCrate II:

Do you think there would be no demand for it?

E.g. a 1U case that will hold as manu raspberries as will fit side-by side along the front, and a powersupply that provides enough power for them behind that, would be nice. Even better when there would be some solution to swap the SD card.

There is a local hosting company where one can colocate raspberries. They already have over 1000 functional and orders for over 2000.

Their solution is a shelf with a central powersupply board and rows of raspberries in standard cases mounted vertically on the shelf. That way they can mount 48 raspberries on a shelf, that are then connected to a 48+2 port switch mounted under the shelf. That means at least 3U for 48 raspberries. i.e. 3 racks for this purpose...

But of course I am thinking more like 5-8 raspberries in a 1U case. That would be a convenient solution when a couple of them are used in a local computer room.

Rack cases are common in the radio/electronics world. I boguht a 2U one a little while back for some radio gear. From eBay uk... In the electronics world they are more commonly called rack enclosures, A search of ebay using that name should find you some.

--
Stan Barr     plan.b@dsl.pipex.com

Yes, that is of course a possibility! However, for us lazy people it is always nice to have a case with the correct cutouts, mounting holes and powersupply :-)

There are of course numerous companies that will do that for you...at an appropriate price:(

--
W J G

I can tell you drilling holes in a thick steel front panel is no fun!

I wouldn't have though you'd need a full PC PSU, a pi only needs 5V. Small switch-mode psus are quite cheap, tiny and silent. One big enough to run 10 PIs would be about the size of a couple of packs of ciggies. I use a 24V 5A (120W) one about that size to run a battery charger.

--
Stan Barr     plan.b@dsl.pipex.com

Laser cut plastic shouldn't be too difficult.

The most annoying thing is the power cables. Perhaps through the 26 way port?

Theo

Even when it is aluminium it is no fun to make cutouts for RJ45 and USB.

I never mentioned a PC PSU. It of course should be a 5V PSU with suffcient current for a number of raspberries and a suitable internal power connection panel.

This can also be homebrew, but in the case of the colocation service I was talking about it turns out to be an item affecting the deployment time very heavily (it took them a couple of months to design and manufacture a suitable power distribution board).

this from 2010:

--
?? 100% natural

I wonder if they knew about that one...

However, what they made is a 48-port unit that also has electronic switching of each individual output. (so you can powercycle your PI from a control panel)

essentially why not buy a rack mount PC case with psu in it?

less than a couple of hundred usually.

e.g.

see first item, with 350W psu.

room for lots of pies.

--
Ineptocracy 

(in-ep-toc?-ra-cy) ? a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.

Because you'd be paying for a load of stuff that you don't use? All the mounting hardware for drives, cards, mobo will be scrapped, the PSU has a 12 Volt rail ... all you need is an empty case, a few simple brackets, USB hubs and Ethernet hubs - that's two holes in the back for power and network, plus a row of slots in the front if you want to access the SD cards. Maybe individual power switches too, but for occasional use you can just pull the rack (easy to do because there's hardly anything hanging out the back) and disconnect internally.

well you do that every time ou buy a PI anyweay.

sheesh five posts in the base and two bent brackets aint much to disregard.

so waht? no one firces ypu to use it.

in the end a mass produce rack PC chassis is cheap and available, what you want is not.

--
Ineptocracy 

(in-ep-toc?-ra-cy) ? a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.

I own one of these:

It's not a problem :)

If anyone in the UK Midlands area needs something like that doing, contact me and I'll see what can be done.

--
*Plain Text* email -- it's an accessibility issue 
()  no proprietary attachments; no html mail 
/\  ascii ribbon campaign -

That was my point, sorta. I thought someone mentioned rack computer cases which usually come with PSUs...mebbe I mis-remembered, I'm good at that these days :-(

(In the middle of mounting my pi on the back of a moniter, I looked at the kits for doing that and figgered I'd do it myself)

--
Stan Barr     plan.b@dsl.pipex.com

Or the speel chucker. Modern PSUs are designed to provide mostly 12V,

5V may be produced by regulating the main 12V supply - this isn't going to be efficient when you only want 5V (and running costs are usually an important consideration these days).

It's not me that wants it, but if I did I'd build or buy a plain empty rack case/drawer/cradle (from about £30 on eBay, less from the scrap man), not pay extra for one that had been built to suit hardware that I wasn't going to use and had holes in all the wrong places. Sure, if I had a scrap server or switch to take the case from I might use it, but that wouldn't be my first choice if I was looking for materials.

I want one! One of the holes I had to make was about 3x2 inches, hard work by hand :-( Still, all done now and in the rack...

--
Stan Barr     plan.b@dsl.pipex.com

By hand as in no power tools? Because it's just drill four holes, rough it out with a jigsaw or nibbler and tidy up with a file.

??????

+-12v IIRC is ONLY required for USB,serial and disks. and a few other oddities. The machine core runs largely off 5v.

normally the 5v is heavily switch mode regulated and the 12v stuff is just 'overwind' on the final output transformer. what limits the power is not the current on any winding, bit simply the sum total of all the power being fed to the systems/.

So whether tou are taking 20 amps at 5V or 8A at 12v is neither here nor there.

# No. the 5v supply is the regulated one. The 12v are just more or less tied to that by the turns ratio on the output transformer. Accurate 12v has never been a massive requirement for computers, but accurate 5v has.

See

the feedback is from the +- 5V rails, not the +-12v ones.

The thing to understand is that these are not SEPARATE power supplies. They are part of one power supply that can push as much power as it can push, and where you take its output is largely irrelevant to it. Unless you actually fuse the 5V winding....

As shown above it is a totally false assumption you make, and there is zero efficiency loss. the only componentes involved in the +- 12v and the -5V are a few turns of wire, and 6 diode and some zero loss output filters.

*shrg* whatever. But a PC rack chassis with PSU has an ideal power supply, plenty of space and all the right mounting ears. Plus a useful on off switch some audio stuff and generally cutouts to mount whatever IO plates you need.

And they are cheaper than a one off metal bash.

--
Ineptocracy 

(in-ep-toc?-ra-cy) ? a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.