Ponoko panda2 case

EL paper also available here : Experimenter Kits – Miller Engineering :wink:

I’m building a FEZ based “universal” RC remote and would love to have an enclosure for it with the basic form factor of an XBox 360 controller but with an area between the handles large and deep enough to enclose a Panda-II with a 4.3" touchscreen. Anyone know a place that sells custom R/C enclosures? I guess the last resort would be to try and model one and have Ponoko 3D print it. Anyone have experience with what their cost for such a project would be?

@ ianlee74 -

I’ve poked around for off the shelf enclosures and found the selection surprisingly limited, even for a straight up arduino form factor. Rectangle with a couple of not so precisely placed holes for power/accessories is what you’ll find. Seems like anyone who needs a custom enclosure does their own if they’re lucky enough to have access to the right equipment. Outsourcing to Ponoko or similar is a nice option IF (big if) your design is perfect. I went through several prototypes on a scroll saw before sending this (basic) one to them.

Sounds like a fun project. You’ve probably figured out that you can’t get a Panda2 to drive a 4.3 display, though. A seperate graphics board might work. Keep us posted on your progress.

Yea, sounds like a lucritive business opportunity for someone wanting to fund their hobby.

I just threw out the 4.3" number for size reference. The reality is that I haven’t fully decided on the board or screen. I’m prototyping on a Tahoe-II at the moment which has the screen on-board. There’s no good way to mount it so that the screen could go flush to an enclosure w/o unsoldering it from the board and I don’t really want to do that. So, in the near future I’ll probably go with a Panda-II with the 2.4" FEZ Touch but I hope that sometime in the future we’ll have the ability to upgrade at a decent price (Panda-III wish).

I don’t know about lucrative, but funding my hobby would make my wife (and me) happy ::slight_smile:

[addendum]

I stumbled across this post about creating a custom enclosure using a ‘tab in slot’ method: [url]http://tinyurl.com/customenclosure[/url] This approach opens up a whole lot of very reasonably priced possibilities. The cost is in the time sink required to get up to speed on the tool chain. This guy used Eagle for one step, so we’re part of the way there already.

Yeah, I have made on of those with my scroll saw for the ice tube clock:

Adafruit used similar approach for monochron clock as well.

Nice link. Problem still is that all you can really do with that is build boxes. I’m afraid what I want will require 3D printing to get the curves. Maybe I can get an old XBox controller and figure a way to cut it in half and design a box to insert in the middle…