Raspberry PI Zero Round Cluster Case

thingiverse

Update on 2017 June 13 v3 looks great, with full access to both USB ports and HDMI ports. My plan now is to have the control node be a Pi Zero W and access the device wirelessly, which means the fan unit could just be an 80mm fan. This will result in a much smaller box than I originally planned, under it that bolts to the fan with feet screwed on by the same screws holding the fan in place. Update on 2017 June 12 Just finished the third version of the build with only a few minor tweaks. Printing it right now, I'll pull v3 if there are any major issues during printing. Going to design the base next and get a Raspi 2 installed into it by the end of the week. Work out some proof-of-concept things. Planning on hitting Micro Center next week, and picking up some micro SD cards so I can program all of them. I may put a Raspi Zero W into it instead of a Raspi 3 just to keep it Pi Zero only. Update on 2017 June 11 Finally got 12 Raspberry Pi Zeros, which took a long time. I printed the case and it was close, but didn't fit correctly. So I made adjustments and am in the middle of printing again. I have uploaded my current work, which is v2... if I make more changes it will be v3. Getting closer and closer, I'll have the final project tomorrow night. There's a base file that this cluster is designed to fit onto, with a 120mm fan in the bottom. A Raspberry Pi 3 is supposed to be screwed into this base, then a fan added. Need to make a few more holes for power and a power switch. This is a work-in-progress. Just posting it now to get some feedback. My write-up of the project is at blogger. This case is designed to allow you to put up to 12 PI Zeros into a single small computer case, wire them up with one pair of wires between each PI and run serial networking between them all. The benefit of this is very low-latency communications but at the cost of low bandwidth. This is actually a very acceptable trade-off with tasks that have frequent small messages that must be processed as quickly as possible. A single master node would be connected to a network switch, and this would be used to dispatch jobs to the cluster. The short wire paths between boards should improve latency. I got this idea after reading about how the early Cray computers were constructed in a C shape to reduce wire length. Eventually, this will be a stackable design and allow you to cluster many more machines in a small area. If this works for Pi Zero computers, then it would work even better using a Raspi 2 and a Raspi 3 when it comes out, with even more performance or some other computer board that is higher-performance and low-power consumption. It should be straightforward to modify the function that is called to cut out the proper holes and slots for any of a dozen or so boards and adjust the quantity you want in the case.