Hello,
I see there’s a readily available customized plastic enclosure for the FEZ Cobra. I’d really like two of them for the FEZ Domino, and I’m positive others would as well. Are there plans to release one soon? If not, can I speak directly to someone from GHI who could provide me with a quote?
Many thanks.
The form-factor of FEZ Domino is made to be compatible with Ardunio, which is not suitable for any enclosure. You can get it in an enclosure but it will not fit well. Also adding shields would be impossible.
We had internal talks about making a new device that is like FEZ Domino but it is made the “GHI-way”, just like FEZ Cobra…the right way!
This is just talk and we do not know if we will ever do it.
With that said, anyone can take the design of FEZ Domino (it is open source) and make a board to fin in any enclosure.
Hello all,
Some day’s ago, i just was thinking about this that other day, to make a stackable enclosure for the FEZ Domino. The only problem with this idea is that every shield has his own size and that means that is not easy to make this, i think.
Like anything, I’m sure you can find some generic enclosure that will work - but as Gus says, the Domino form-factor is based on the arduino and that is, well, not ideal for fitting in a “standard” case. But if you want to bump around and try hand-mounting stuff, I am sure you can find something that might suit depending on your local hardware supplier. Me, I’ve got my eye on a plastic kit box from Jaycar, an AU based electronics retailer - but I know I might have depth issues if I need to stack too many shields so I’ve got spools of flat ribbon cable if needed!
Here is an enclosure that is made customized for Arduino http://www.esawdust.com/product/encl-cham1-basic/
The company did contact us about offering an enclosure for FEZ Domino like they do for Arduino. This maybe an option. You can contact them and ask when they will have the FEZ Domino custom plates available.
Or like Brett said, you can use about any generic enclosure and customize it.
None of these options is perfect fit, like we have for FEZ Cobra, but depending on what you want, you maybe okay with one of the options above.
We’re the company Gus is referring to and we recently introduced an Arduino-specific metal enclosure, “Crib for Arduino”:
http://www.esawdust.com/product/encl-crib-arduino/
It’s high enough to accommodate a shield - in fact, we’ve got an Arduino and ethernet shield faceplate available for it.
All we’d need to do is create a new FEZ Domino-specific faceplate, and it would be a good solution for the FEZ. I would like to do it if there’s enough interest.
Thanks, Gus, for the note,
Landon Cox
www.ESawdust.com
Landon, I believe we have placed an order for one of those enclosures so we can test them out for our customers. We hope to see it soon and maybe take some pictures.
You guys also talked about FEZ Domino custom plate that we are also waiting to see
I have seen this enclosure earlier, but no offends Landon, but this case is to massive and heavy to be use for a demo and testing.
yeah, but it depends on your use.
That would be a perfect enclosure for a “set and (now) forget” project that you’ve created a Fez Domino project for, and want to mount somewhere securely in the garage, or some other more “industrial” location.
That wouldn’t be the perfect enclosure if you wanted to have a discrete project sitting in the kitchen or loungeroom.
If you’re still “prototyping” then it’s also not the right case - the case where you leave it sitting on the desk in the “workshop” 
If you’re doing “demos” then I can see it might be good since it hides a lot of the inner workings.
So in the end it still all comes down to what you are trying to achieve, what level of “official looking”, “robust”, or DIY you want to portray - and Fez is catering to us all !
Why not create a own enclosure?
With my cobra, I took a “normal” plexi plate and cut it in an L-shape. You could easily bend some plexi to create a housing…?
The enclosure provided with the alu is very good for “plug and forget” projects, but it’s not suited for testing. Well, I guess you cannot have all features in 1 product… 
Brett is right - there are many possible enclosure designs for any board based on intended use. Our company has built large vehicle location systems for emergency responders so we tend to design and offer parts based on what we think is missing in the market…it’s hard to find custom enclosures for off-the-shelf boards.
The Crib for Arduino, what we would use as a basis for a FEZ enclosure, was designed to be tall enough for a shield so it may be too big if you don’t use shields, but more than likely you have other electronics that go with the project, so you’ll have room. The enclosure weighs 5.6 ozs (159 grams), so, for a metal enclosure, it’s very lightweight and strong.
All our enclosures were designed to fill the gap between getting something working on the bench, a pure prototype, and getting it into the field, a real pilot.
For example, if you built a vehicle location unit based on Arduino or FEZ Domino and you wanted to install it under the seat of your auto, this is the type of enclosure system we need, use and therefore design. Need a case to protect your project above the ceiling or let you bolt it onto the rafters of your house or beams of a building? We design for those use cases. I even use pieces of our enclosure systems for a speed climbing timing system where competitive climbers are both kicking and smacking various sensors in the system.
We use enclosures like legos. These are the places you would find our type of enclosures…more industrial where the need for good mounting options and robustness matter.
For our part, we work on microcontroller-based systems that may contain anywhere between 5 and 100 units - this can be the volume that lives in no-man’s-land - where you don’t have the budget to go design your own board and enclosure system, so off-the-shelf is flexible, good, fast. This is where these things fit in the market space.
I didn’t so much want this to sound like a sales pitch but to talk about some of the thinking behind these types of enclosures and gauge the interest from potential users.
Thanks, everyone,
Landon
www.ESawdust.com
Thanks for all your replies, folks, especially esawdust.
I’m almost positive I’ll be going with a custom manufacturing job using the machine shop here or another online case manufacturer, though for small runs it’s rather expensive. The issue is we need the smallest box possible. In any case, it should be a fun project for me in addition to the Domino project code itself.
When you say small box, what do you mean? Is 5" by 4" considered small. I am only asking out of curiosity
The smallest case I’ve seen for this kind of thing is two plexi-glass (perspex) acrylic sheets just over the size of the device you need to house, with space in the corners to drill holes, then bolted together with a spacer between to sandwich the device there. Works awesome as an easy and simple case, and not too hard to find raw materials to do this with.
I have a few prototypes that are built Brett’s way. Good and simple.
If you wanted to make a DIY mount without much effort, you could also screw some standoffs into the board then put some dabs of JBWeld on the bottom. Figure out where you want the board, and plop it down. That way, your standoff positions match the board perfectly.
Gus, 5" x 4" isn’t quite small enough – I’m thinking a snug fit for the unit with no room for a shield or other components. I’d need access to just the USB ports, power plug, and SD card slot. One of the problems I’m running into is trying to mount the board flush into a corner, but this isn’t a problem at all with Brett’s idea, which I might be able to pursue. That would also save the hassle of having to pipe the LEDs out to the enclosure surface and machine everything out. It depends on how rugged the application is. We’ll see.
Thanks for the idea Brett.
As promised, I created a FEZ Domino faceplate for the Crib for Arduino case and created a Crib for FEZ Domino package. You can see more at [url]http://bit.ly/cribfez[/url]
Also, if you are one of those running FEZ Domino with an Ethernet Shield there’s an optional FEZ Domino with Ethernet Shield faceplate available for the case: [url]http://bit.ly/cribfezeth[/url]
The footprint for the Crib for FEZ Domino is 4.4" x 2.6" so it has room behind to place batteries or other aspects of your project.
Hopefully this fits some needs in the FEZ Domino community. Thanks,
Landon Cox
www.ESawdust.com
Hey Landon,
Have you looked at supporting the Netduino, just out of curiosity?
esawdust, we look forward to see some samples and possible offer it right here for our customers
Cool Looks good. Order done