Raspberry Pi: Some accesories and mods for my Pi

Not something Amiga related by all means, but since I love my Pi I thought about sharing some mods I done some days ago.

Well my Pi isn't something special. It's a normal Rev.B from the first batch.

  • It uses a tiny USB WiFi NIC for connecting to my home network.
  • It's housed in a ModMyPi case.
  • It also uses a 16GB MicroSD card for it's OS via an MicroSD card adaptor

Everything's fine so far :)

Some time ago I pledged for a nice and tiny ON/OFF switch adapter for the Raspberry Pi. You can see the Kickstarter page here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1312527055/micro-usb-on-off-power-switch-for-raspberry-pi

After the project being funded, sadly I haven't received anything, so I email Mausberry Circuits where they were very polite and send me another one, and also one more switch of their new line for free :) Lotsa kudos guys! Their switches was these...

I decided to use the second switch they sent me cause it was mounting directly to the Pi, and the same PSU (micro USB) plug was also needed to power the switch. Win-Win situation. After giving it a test on my Pi and everything was working... I desoldered the header for the GPIO pins, and soldered the wires directly to the mini PCB.

Also I soldered both it's wires to pins 23-24 of GPIO connector as I wouldn't use them at all (at least for now). I can desolder these anyway whenever I want as it's too damn easy :)

So this is how it looks with the power switch attached :)

Some time ago I got an Sony Vaio US UMPC which had 2xZIF HD's. One 32GB SSD and one 40GB HD. As I wanted to increase my storage, I got an 128GB SSD so I had both these ZIF storages sitting doing nothing. Ofc, because I always want to use spare stuff, I ordered some time ago the appropriate ZIF2IDE and also ZIF2USB adapters to be able to setup and use these ZIF HDs for other machines.

Time has come and I discovered that the 32GB SSD HD would be awesome as a external storage for my Pi. If only it could fit inside that tiny case!!! (Damn I shouldn't have said that...)

I saw that I could remove the innards of the SSD by simply removing 4x screws on the back of the metal case. That was it! The SSD was really thin and awesome! After putting the thin ribbon and positioning carefully the ZIF2USB adapter, everything was placed safely inside (ofc some insulation with tape was put for safety) :)

You must have seen the custom USB cable that was stripped from a USB to Mini USB cable that I had after cutting it, making a small hole to the case.
WHY DID HE MADE A HOLE ON THE CASE (you might wonder).
Well for three reasons actually...
1. First because there isn't a TINY bitsy space or hole in order to bring the cable
2. Because there isn't a TINY bitsy space or hole in the PCB in order to bring the cable on the bottom side of the PCB if I wanted to solder it directly to the USB connector.
3. Because bringing a cable outside, could give me the possibility to just disable it, and mount the USB connector to a PC/Amiga etc and use it as an external 32GB HD :)
So this is what the hole looks like and this is how the USB cable is connected simply in the original connector.
Whenever I want, I simply disconnect the USB cable (even with Pi powered off) and attach it to anywhere I want as a mass storage device :)
This is how it looks from the outside... It's tiny and powerful shiz LOL.
And this is my Pi working and seeing perfectly the 32GB NTFS partition...
I hope you like it (although non Amigish) :)
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