[Raspberry Pi General] FrankieDedo:
I had the bright idea to build a "small" machine torrent, with a Raspberry, lots of LEGO and some electronic component.

What I present is a work built especially on spare time, still processing but working 24-hour a day! :)

What you see in the picture is the version that I called 3.0 for now :) I did the 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 and 3.5 (with Raspberry Pi B +)

The idea was born from a simple need: I could not keep the PC on all day to download torrents, or in other words, consuming energy and making some noise at night ... so I asked myself, what alternatives do I have? Internet answered me with "Raspberry Pi". I noticed some small projects that used the board as a machine used to download/upload torrents and my geeky addiction for those stuff made me immediately fell in love! I also noticed some projects that consisted of case for RPi made with LEGO, and I could not pull back in the face of challenge, partly because of the tons of bricks in the attic waiting to be exhumed after years ... at which point I thought, "Why i shouldn't build a case also for the hard disk?" and again: "Why do you not make a case that also contains all the cables?" and finally: "Ok, from the case there will be a single wire that goes to the wall outlet"

And so it was, that at the arrival of the mini-pc the work began!

The project had the following requirements:

- A case (preferably aestethically nice) made of LEGO

- No LEGO brick was to be mistreated (glue, holes, crimping), only removable housings with non-LEGO pieces

- A single wire for current input

- A cooling system

- The minimum number of non-LEGO parts visible from the outside

- A small display for any physical access to the machine

- A USB hub to connect USB drives, external hard drives, mouse + keyboard, etc.

- And above all, lots and lots and lots of patience and time!

A bit of schematics on paper, some boxes full of LEGO, and the site is now open!

Version 1.0

This is the case of the Raspberry only, easily removable from the rest of the building:

The hard-disk housing:

The fan! The tubes are taken from an old LEGO Mars base, and the air is pumped to the Raspberry (which has seen lowering its temperature of 40-45 Celsius degrees! This means that it works!) and all hard drives. The rear tubes instead are routing wires between the raspberry pi and the harddisk, and the central block. The fan is connected to a USB socket placed under the hub.

The gem of the goodies: fan control! The switch turns on and off the fan and set the red LED. The green LED is lit when the TorrentBox is attached to the current. The nice thing is that both lights are sticking perfectly LEGO holes! :D

The interiors of the beast (yes that it is a power strip down there!)

Whoops, i forgot the hub!

Overview:

Disco time!:

After a few days I realized how fragile the structure was, and in addition, I found the box with all the gray and dark LEGO, so i decided to do a more "professional" building and made it similar to a factory :)

Version 2.0

Designing the front writing

Spoiler content hidden.

Internal...

...and external restructuring!

Final result:

At this point I said to myself: why not put some little LEGO man "at work" as it already seems like an industry? Said and done :D

After some time, with the arrival of the much coveted display (a vulgar 7" display with 800x480 resolution, the kind that you find in chinese car radios) i have began updating the now massive construction (20cm high and the base of the block was 25x15cm). In the project i also included a touchscreen with its USB adapter, but i accidentally broke the panel, and even though i have a spare one to grab from my old car radio, the configuration with raspbian was pretty mangy, and for now i left apart this addition: P

Version 3.0

Here is the housing for the screen (other 7cm in height!) The display has a hdmi connection that goes directly to the raspberry through the rear tubes:

Since my house, from time to time, is populated by various little cousins, I thought to give the beast a protective cover which, however, leaves a glimpse of the situation on the screen (incredibly 4 Droideka arms from Star Wars sets are strong enough to hold the lid firmly!)

Access to the display controls (which are connected via a flat cable to the display board)

Some cosmetic change here and there, to standardize everything :)

Here it is in function :) :

Version 3.5 has already the Raspberry Pi B + (the one with 4 usb ports) but is identical to the 3.0 for the moment. I will remove the hub (which is slow, and can only be used for a keyboard or a mouse), but to do this i should open everything but i am a little sick of putting hands into that mess (and i do not have so much time since I started working full-time)

However, sooner or later I'll put my hands into it, and of course I will post the results here! ;)

Let me know what you liked, what you DO NOT liked and if you want to know something more about it (maybe I forgot to say something)... Bye!!

I also have a couple of videos that will upload soon!

P.S. Here are the links to the Imageshack and Tinypic album (they are identical), to see all the images:

Imageshack: https://imageshack.com/a/KfMq/1

Tinypic: http://it.tinypic.com/a/2v9ya/2