I grabbed a beepy a little while back (if interested BE ADVISED: they’ve since gone dark and left a bunch of people holding out for one, I got really lucky and ordered super early) so I could work on some python stuff on the go. I didn’t like having all the parts exposed, and the cases available seemed too flimsy for my liking.

I fired up blender and designed a unibody case for it. Printed it out on my Ender 3 and its been pretty great. I use it with some software I’m writing to turn a raspberry pi into a portable sensor data acquisition and visualization platform called a Picorder (Pi + Tricorder).

Nice back view with my picorder logo

It took a couple revisions to get here, mostly to get the feel in the hand right. I wanted some bulbousness to make it easier to hold.

It’s designed so the PCB slides into it and is affixed by two screws, and then a top cap is secured with four more screws to protect the top.

I’ve been printing a couple years now and enclosures are still my favourite item to design and print. So satisfying to hold something in your hand that was once just a 3D model and is now a fully real object. I wanted to add some content here as I’ve enjoyed looking at the other posts!

I wish you all easy first layers and good prints!

    • eric@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      There’s a link in the post to the website which has an FAQ, and the first question is yours. Their answer:

      Beepy is a portable computing device, with a beautiful high contrast, high resolution display, and a tactile keyboard + touchpad, it is the ultimate everyday hacking gadget.

      Powered by the Raspberry Pi Zero W (or any other compatible SBCs), you can use it as a chat device (supporting all chat networks on Beeper e.g. iMessage/WhatsApp/Signal/etc. ), or use it as a hackable handheld cyberdeck, running any Linux application that runs on the Pi.