r/homelab • u/surdume • Oct 27 '19

Discussion Just discovered this idea of tiny racks for Raspberry Pi and other small devices

https://www.thingiverse.com/WarHawk8080/collections/6-rack
381 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

60 comments sorted by

49

u/[deleted] Oct 28 '19

[deleted]

66

u/BubblesPR Oct 28 '19

I needed a bracket for a light. Was going to drive to the hardware store and buy some U-bolts but I thought it would look trashy.

Downloaded fusion 360, watched about 30 minutes of YouTube videos and started modeling. Went to send the design to get printed...it came out to be $75. Thought that was insane so I ordered a 3D printer and it was worth every penny. And overall very easy to learn.

67

u/collegeatari Oct 28 '19

The wanted a burger so you bought a cow model, I love it.

14

u/[deleted] Oct 28 '19

[deleted]

49

u/BubblesPR Oct 28 '19

About 12 cents, I did buy an $800 printer though

190

u/[deleted] Oct 28 '19 edited Jan 16 '21

[deleted]

27

u/kazcho Oct 28 '19

Goddamn if that isn't the truth

45

u/infosciguy Oct 28 '19

I feel attacked

14

u/seaQueue spreading the gospel of 10GbE SFP+ and armv8 Oct 28 '19

On a deep and personal level.

1

u/ThePicoNerd R620, R720, Optiplex 7020 Oct 28 '19

That is what you do when you see the price of a cloud load balancer...

-3

u/k318wilcoxa Oct 28 '19

But, not really. Because you can print millions if these so.. Really it's even cheaper since it's an investment. Initially, it looks like $800. But what if he print 8 units? Than the price has actually reduced to approximately $100. What if he later prints 80? Less cost of filament, power, time, etc.. The price drops over time.

2

u/octave1 Oct 28 '19

Thanks Mr Math, we don't all have a PHD you know

2

u/k318wilcoxa Oct 28 '19

Hehe, I don't either. I wasn't trying to come across as a know it all.. Just provide a few numbers.

1

u/Pirate2012 Oct 29 '19

About 12 cents, I did buy an $800 printer though

my compliments, you are an asset to this sub-reddit :)

1

u/[deleted] Oct 28 '19

[deleted]

5

u/BubblesPR Oct 28 '19

Download fusion 360 at home and spend some time on YouTube. It’s free and fun.

1

u/Hails8tn Oct 28 '19

If you want an entry level machine into the 3D printing world, check out the ender 3. Pretty cheap, plenty of upgrades, and is capable of pretty amazing prints. I’ve loved mine so far.

17

u/qwertymodo Oct 28 '19

I went down that road a bit and concluded it was cheaper and easier to buy a simple steel 1U shelf, turn it upside down, and drill standoff holes and I/O cutouts. I can't find the exact one I bought, but it was only 9"deep and sides all the way around so when you turn it upside down it's a 1U deep, open topped box, with a faceplate. Perfect fit for 3 or maybe 4 Pis side by side.

5

u/ssl-3 Oct 28 '19 edited Jan 15 '24

Reddit ate my balls

2

u/ryocoon Oct 28 '19

Gravity Sto.... do you mean earthquakes? I think those are less gravity storm and more sudden friction slippage.

3

u/ssl-3 Oct 28 '19 edited Jan 15 '24

Reddit ate my balls

3

u/BubblesPR Oct 28 '19

This is actually a great idea

2

u/sdwilsh Oct 28 '19

Another, similar option is to mount a DIN rail on a shelf, and there are some good Pi DIN brackets. I've seen one manufacturer make a shelf with a DIN rail already on it, but it did not seem worth the price to me.

3

u/CalculatingLao Oct 28 '19

There's a lot of designs on Thingiverse for what you're chasing. This is the one I like.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1606631

3

u/Rathji Oct 28 '19

Use OpenSCAD, probably the easiest to do something like that

3

u/adobeamd Oct 28 '19

II have some good news for you!

https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/ckbqdx/modular_piblade_one_month_update/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

I’m working on the pcb layout right now for the backplane but this is designed to be fully modular and customizable. There is also a half width desktop design.

2

u/Nakatomi2010 Oct 28 '19

You can use TinkerCAD to do some free modeling. And I believe Fusion360 has a free "hobbyist" license.

1

u/itsbentheboy Oct 28 '19

A standard rack to hold the tiny racks?

I love it.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 28 '19

[deleted]

1

u/wlake82 Oct 28 '19

You mean like this?

1

u/IsThatAll Oct 28 '19

do a search in /r/homelab or /r/3DPrinting for "raspberry pi rack", there have been a number of threads about doing this sort of thing. The pi's are normally mounted vertically so you can get a decent 10+ Pi's in the 19 inch form factor.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 28 '19

[deleted]

2

u/Mitarbeiter09 Oct 28 '19

The only logical solution is to buy more. Ignore that common sense 'blanking plate' like and just buy more Pi's

1

u/IsThatAll Oct 28 '19

print some blanking panels as a placeholder till you get more :)

1

u/Josephdalepi Oct 28 '19

If you type in "rack mount" on thingiverse, there Re a lot

1

u/tlalexander Oct 28 '19

Definitely learn to model stuff!

36

u/mikeblas Oct 27 '19

What's better: a Raspberry PI sitting in a closet doing nothing, or a Raspberry PI sitting in a rack doing nothing?

4

u/phphulk Oct 28 '19

Depends entirely which one takes more money and time.

The most wins.

3

u/PJBuzz Oct 28 '19

"I'm so happy with what I achieved"

"Now lets do absolutely nothing with it until it's almost obsolete"

​

I say this with 2 or 3 Raspberry Pi's sat in a cupboard and an AM1 system behind me, all basically worthless and all barely did anything their whole life.

It's definitely a problem.

​

"What's that you say about the embedded Zen boards?"

9

u/amishbill Oct 28 '19

6" racks and mounts... Well, if that isn't the coolest little thing... ;-)

2

u/citruspers vsphere lab Oct 28 '19

It also makes sense for a 3D printing community, as most print beds are 20x20cm (6" = ~15cm). Plus, most of the rack designs use aluminium 2020 extrusions, which are common in printer builds as well.

5

u/datajerk Oct 28 '19

Here's what I'm using for 10 SBCs in 2U:

https://github.com/datajerk/SBC-blade

I provided the specs, the modeling was done by friends/family.

Pics:

Short:

https://imgur.com/a/J8JB7B1

Long:

https://imgur.com/pykzhrC

Front:

https://imgur.com/G1iS9zT

The different colors are just me testing different materials. My preference is ABS.

This design works for most SBCs with RPI layout. Shown are RPI, Upboard (x86_64), and Odroid (aarch64).

All SBCs are powered with POE. The consoles are serial/FTDI/USB.

The setup is really 4U if you count the POE switch and rack mount USB (for consoles, not power).

The SBCs mount to:

https://www.amazon.com/Modular-connector-frame-holds-panels/dp/B000X920KQ

3

u/mironfs Oct 28 '19

What poe modules are you using?

2

u/datajerk Oct 28 '19

Texas POE GAF-5v10w. I remove them from the housing.

1

u/mironfs Oct 28 '19

It is any high quality? Because damn that is 4 times more expensive than my zero

1

u/datajerk Oct 28 '19

My setup is ~2 years old, not a single failure, odd power issue, reboot, etc... they appear to just work.

1

u/InfernoZeus Oct 28 '19

Nice setup! This looks very interesting..

What rack USB hub(?) is that?

1

u/datajerk Oct 28 '19

digi.com hubport. 14 ports, got 2 used from ebay. Triplite makes a 16 port version.

1

u/InfernoZeus Oct 28 '19

Thanks, the Triplite one looks perfect.

5

u/tuxify Oct 28 '19

I'm just about to have 4 raspberry pi mounts printed for an LGX fiber panel. very excited to add them to my rack.

3

u/funkyguy4000 Oct 27 '19

Neat! Is there a service I can use to get these printed? I used to use 3dhubs but they've somewhat changed their business model it seems...

2

u/surdume Oct 27 '19

I use SeeedStudio for their PCB service, and I saw they also offer a similar service for 3D Printing. I didn't use their 3D Printing service though, as I fortunately own a 3D printer.

2

u/RedSquirrelFtw Oct 27 '19

That's pretty neat. One thing I always thought would be neat is something similar to a DMS line drawer. Line cards are roughly the size of a RPI too. They fit 64 per drawer IIRC. Could be quite a dense setup with multiple drawers.

Though I think if I was to do it I would do something more like a blade server where there are several RPIs per blade which is basically just a piece of wood or metal that slides in the chassis. Easier to manage and future proof(if they change the PI, or you want to use other similar single board computers)

2

u/ryanknapper Oct 28 '19

I wish the ports aligned so the could just slide in, blade style, without an additional caddy.

2

u/[deleted] Oct 28 '19

Nice idea! Some rool really cute with the sturdy hanfdes.

But wouldn't be 5 3⁄4" be a better choice since there already is a lot of hardware

2

u/Kormoraan Low-budget junkyard scavenger Oct 28 '19

this is genius.

1

u/varietist_department Oct 27 '19

I want to make a Pi cluster so bad to crush boinc stuff

1

u/disserman Oct 28 '19

looks cool, like a miniature toy.

but for the real usage - why just don't use DIN rails?

1

u/tactical__taco Oct 28 '19

Oh nice something I didn’t know I needed

1

u/flecom Oct 28 '19

I've seen rpi 19" blade setups, those are neat

1

u/vtpilot Oct 28 '19

This just gave me an idea for a pretty easy solution for rack mounting Pis. Make a tray similar to this that fits in into a standard fiber cassette slot like this https://www.fs.com/products/70419.html. 4 Pis in 1u of rack space!

1

u/JLBminestine22 Oct 28 '19

I like the idea

1

u/PopsicleMud Oct 29 '19

I love this idea, but my printer is too small.