Pivena – The Open Source Raspberry Pi Case

Raspberry Pi Laptop

Still not too sure how to house your awesome Raspberry Pi B model? Don’t worry, [Timothy Giles] has got you covered! He’s just finished this very sleek open source PIvena case for anyone to use.

Why is it called the PIvena? He’s basing it off of [Bunnie’s] Novena project which is a hobby-based open source laptop! For more information you can checkout the recent interview we had with [Bunnie] himself!

Anyway, back to the hack — it features a laser cut case which has plenty of room for the Pi and any additional hardware you want to add. Like the Novena, the screen also functions as a lid, opening up to reveal the electronics, allowing for easy tinkering. All the files can be acquired over at Thingiverse, and he has assembly instructions available on Instructables.

Besides being open source, which is the name of the game over here at Hack a Day, [Timothy’s] also written up an excellent summary of some of the design challenges he had during the project’s creation — one of which was making his own hinges, which took several iterations to become the following:

For more juicy design tips don’t forget to check out his blog!

13 thoughts on “Pivena – The Open Source Raspberry Pi Case

    1. I think it’s just you. Making it a laptop (with a battery) allows you to tinker on code in places you wouldn’t normally. It’s easy to program an Arduino with it, so this could be some minimalist’s dream. I’m making one portable with a seven inch screen loaded with emulators for camping. Should be fun 2 player co-op Metal Slug in the middle of the woods. But maybe I’m missing the point of camping, lol

      1. Then why not just use a real laptop? Even an old netbook will run circles around the Pi’s CPU. (It’s about as fast as a 300mhz Pentium II, according to the FAQ.) It’s not like emulators, Arduino programming, and Linux didn’t exist before the Raspberry Pi was invented.

        It’s great as an accessible embedded platform, but as a “PC” it can barely keep up with its own GUI.

    2. The point of the RasPi is a hype tester. It lets other companies test bizspeak keywords in sales ads. I should really look into dumbing down a TV to only play audio (crappily), and not have enough processing power to display an entire image so that you get the unique task of going in and finding the corrupted register that will let you output the entire display. I can then sit for two weeks and rest as I wait for my terminal headers and such to get in so may as well go ahead and start tweaking that driver I will need. Two more weeks: turns out I had a character off in the first place and that the data on the forum was old so it turns out that it worked all along and no one in 6 months could be bothered to update the thread out of 45,000 unique readers.
      As long as I charge the same as a fully functioning tv, make the blogroll, and test it on open source free range fair trade peruvian chickens, I should make a mint. Oh wait- I need a cutesy name- The Twinkie. “tell em about the twinkie”
      Coming soon! The Twinkie- the TV without sound or video you fix yourself. “Thanks to advances in micro-surge streaming applications and non-neutral fixed osmotic cereal varnishes…. Now only $325.00!”
      Decommissioned android machines run you the same at this point and it is all built in. Never really saw a point to the pi (especially after tinkering with it) if I can get it all in a package that still fits in my shirt pocket and has been tested to not burn down my house in the middle of the night if the cat barfs on it :)

      j0z0r- how about taking up metal detecting? It is a great way to haul electronics camping and it may even defray the cost of gas if you get lucky :) Be sure to check out the stars while you are out and about as well :)

        1. He said it: an android phone (or tablet).

          New ones have quad 2Ghz processors, 32GB RAM, HD display, camera, lots of sensors, GPS, WiFi, IR, USB all built in.

          Old or cheap ones aren’t that far off.

          GPIO? That’s what Bluetooth is for.

          1. I don’t know how many times I’ve needed to throw something up (like an audio stream, a web server, something to read a sensor or control a relay) and was able to reach for a Pi, make a few solder connections, hook it up via wif/ether cable and throw it under the couch or behind the desk… All for about $40-$50… It’s like a swiss army knife of the digital age

      1. I tolly take a Dobsonian refractor with me sometimes, lollers. But a tablet running Android is nowhere near as open and hackable as the Pi. Want to add an SPI screen? Get out. Want to use a Kindle as a screen? Sorry, go home. Want to add a custom button via GPIO? Gonna cost you. I think you and I have vastly different goals and end uses of computers, which is tolly fine. I wish to understand the inner workings of the devices I use so I can recreate them if I ever need to.
        As to your argument of not catching fire, have you seen the recent article about the Galaxy S3 catching fire under some child’s pillow?

    3. I don’t feel they’ve missed the point at all. I’ve made something similar using a pi. I made it for a traveling teacher that needed a device to show power point presentations. This individual isn’t very tech literate and all they wanted was a device to display a pre-made PowerPoint, simply and easily. So now they travel with a pi, power cord, mouse and hdmi cable. A custom os launches the presentation on boot. Simple, and way cheaper than any laptop that would accomplish the same results.

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