BrewPi Case!

Hi everyone!

We are ‘Van Alles Wat Ontwerp’, a small design agency, founded by three DIY enthusiasts. Elco asked us to design a case for the Brewing controller as he had his hands full working on the software and electronics.

Apart from beer, we like 3D printers, laser cutters, brewing beer, White Castle, tasting beer, sniffing soldering fumes, bottling beer, working long hours and yet, we still found the time to graduate as Masters of Science.

With this post we would like to propose our case-design to the community. We hope to get some feedback from you so we can improve the case!

The BrewPi Case

The design of the BrewPi Case was inspired by the raspberry pi case by Adafruit. Apart from its stunning ability to hold a BrewPi, we tried to incorporate some aspects into the design:

– Stackable; not only with itself but also with a case for the Raspberry Pi. This means that in (the extremely rare) case you are not brewing beer you can use the Pi and its casing for other cool projects.
– Non-glue! Say no to the sticky stuff and save your skin, because this case is fitted with fancy snap joints, which means you can also open it up easily.
– Access. Apart from being able to access all the ports on your Arduino and Raspberry Pi you can also access BrewPi’s screw terminals.
– Transparency… Here at ‘Van Alles Wat’ we are all about transparency, this is why the case will be produced in 3mm thick, transparent acrylic. Besides being able to watch the electronics work their magic it’s also great for hygiene.

Front perspective view of the BrewPi Case

Front perspective view of the BrewPi Case

Rear perspective view of the BrewPi Case

Rear perspective view of the BrewPi Case

BrewPi case with a raspberry case stacked on top

BrewPi case with a raspberry case stacked on top

If you are now thinking; ‘nah, I’m not buying that case’, no worries; we are making the design files public under the creative commons license. This way, you can source the material and parts yourself, do your own laser-cutting and voilá; you made your own BrewPi Case. Check out http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:47287 for the files.

Elco will be selling these kits as an optional add-on along side his BrewPi electronics. So if you are thinking of buying one of Elco’s kits you might also be interested in getting the flashy BrewPi Case.

We hope to see some comments, and we will get back to you as soon as we finished the design of version 2.0!

6 Comments

  1. Nate on February 5, 2013 at 18:52

    The adafruit rasp. PI case is the only one I’ve seen worth anything, so this looks like it will be good as well.



  2. Zigurana on February 6, 2013 at 11:03

    Hi!
    Was this case intended to hold the SSRs and/or other heat producing components?



    • Koen & Gijs | Van Alles Wat Ontwerp on February 6, 2013 at 18:54

      Now that you mention it… we’ll definitely discuss this with Elco in our next BrewPi meeting. There is still some space in the case that could be used for this purpose.

      We’d also have to look at how much heat will be produced by the SSR in that case, the other elements don’t heat up that much.



  3. Gijs, Koen & Frits | Van Alles Wat Ontwerp on February 7, 2013 at 11:29

    Post updated with link to the design files on thingiverse: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:47287



  4. Louis Cayle McKernan on February 11, 2013 at 22:01

    how do we order the case?