I've had a Raspberry Pi sitting around for a while now waiting to buy or make a case so I can give it to my 10 year old daughter.
I finally got round to buying a wired control R2D2 off ebay for less then £10, gutted the motor control out and re soldered some of the sound PCB that was inside as it was a mess.
What is inisde
Raspberry Pi B model
4 port USB Hub
- Wireless doungle
- Wireless keyboard and mouse
- USB IR remote
- 1 External USB port
Original R2D2 sounds PCB
Latching circuit for on/off push switch with sounds
At the moment it's running OpenElec
Below you can see the USB Hub, on/off latching circuit and the RPI.
I had forgot to take a picture of the little sound PCB, which fitted nicely in his head
I cut a slot in the bottom so the SD card can be easily swapped converting it form a media center to a computer for my daughter to work on.
The initial switch circuit I made used a NAND gate with a MOSFET. Somehow I managed to kill the MOSFET and decided to redo it using just the one device. I have a copy of the circuit in EAGLE, but I did it at work and at this moment in time can not be bothered to re draw it.
Here you can see the new switch circuit and the RPi with the HDMI cable plugged into it.
HDMI Connecter to plug into the RPi. HDMI uses 4 screened twisted pairs and other singals. Easiest thing to do was buy some cheap cables off ebay and cut one. I was also able to find someone selling the HDMI plugs.
I was lucky enough to come across an HDMI socket with a PCB breakout to screw terminals. Trying to solder wires onto the 0.5 mm, 1mm pitch pins on the connectors is a right pain in the arse. I was also able to get a USB socket with scre terminals, both had pillers so were easy to mount to the R2D2 battery cover.
The rear with the external USB and HDMI out. For the USB I seperated the 5V to switched input so that it is only live when switced on and is able to draw more than 500mA (I believe the RPi can only supply a max od 500mA on it's usb ports). This means I can connected a 2.5" hard drive which can draw up to 1A.
Testing using a spare monitor at work. This meant if I had made a mistake I would not kill the HDMI ports on my TV. As you can see it works.
I got a micro wifi dongle from ebay (I think) which works and a USB IR remote which I came across on dealextreme. I saw a review that somene already bought on for their RPi which works a treat.
The completed R2D2, repainted in white as it was heavily discoloured.
And that's it.