Portable Pi

There are many applications where a portable Raspberry Pi can be really useful. In most general use-cases, it's convenient to have a Raspberry Pi, display and battery contained in a nice package. In this project, we'll put together a portable Raspberry Pi with a battery and display. This project is relatively simple to put together and only requires a few wired connections.

Touch screen UPDATE

New version of enclosure now works with 5" 40-pin TFT Display with Touchscreen and Adafruit DPI TFT Kippah for Raspberry Pi with Touch Support
http://www.adafruit.com/product/1596
http://www.adafruit.com/product/2453

Follow the Kippah Touch tutorial for setting up the software. The 3D printed parts are on thingiverse (labled v2).

Kippah Sauce

This project utilizes the Adafruit DPI Display Kippah "hat-like" board to drive a 5" TFT display without the extra cost and baggage of an HDMI decoder. Kippah gives you nice ultra-fast 18-bit color display. This works great with the 5" displays at 800x480. This display is 'native' so it gets all the graphics accelleration capabilities, instant refresh, etc. you would get from an HDMI display.

PowerBoost 1000C

The PowerBoost 1000C provides 5V @ 1A of regulated power to the Raspberry Pi, Kippah and PAM8302 amplifier. On board charging let's you recharge a lipo battery over microUSB. In this project we are able to comfortably fit a 2500mAh lipo battery in the 3D printed enclosure. 

Built-in Audio (Optional)

There's enough room in the enclosure to fit a thin plastic speaker and a mono Class D audio amplifier. We can wire up an audio cable  (3.5mm jack) to the amp and plug it into the audio jack on the Raspberry Pi. This portion can be optional, but the keep in mind there's no access to the audio jack on this 3D printed enclosure.

In most cases (with terminal), there is noticeable audio interference. The interference is minimized with the use of startx and emulationstation.

3D Printing

This project enclosure was designed specially to fit the components listed in the sidebar and below. The parts unfortunately will not fit on smaller print beds (like the Printrbot Simple). To print the parts, you'll need access to a printer with a minimum build plate of 100mm x 168mm x 30mm.

No 3D printer? You could send the parts to be printed by a service like 3D Hubs, MakerXYZ or shapeways. You could also try checking out your local hacker/maker space or library.

Prerequisite Guides

Check out the guides below to get a better understanding of the Kippah and the Raspberry Pi 2 or B+ (The enclosure is compatible with both).

Parts

  • Adafruit DPI Display Kippah
  • Raspberry Pi 2
  • Raspberry Pi B+
  • 5" TFT display 40-pin
  • PowerBoost 100C
  • PAM8302 Amplifier
  • Thin plastic speaker
  • 2500mAh lithium polymer battery
  • Slide switch
  • Right-angle 3.5mm stereo plug to pigtail cable
  • 3/8" to 1/4" Adapter Screw
  • Swivel-Head Pan Tilt

Tools and Supplies

  • 3D Printer
  • Filament
  • Wire Strippers/Cutters
  • 30/26AWG silicone-coated stranded wire
  • Soldering Iron
  • Solder
  • Helping-third hands
  • Panavise Jr.
  • 6 #2-56 3/8 flat Phillips machine screws
  • 8 #4-40 3/8 flat Phillips machine screws

This guide was first published on Jun 15, 2015. It was last updated on Mar 08, 2024.

This page (Overview) was last updated on Jun 12, 2015.

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