Weatherproof case build

[ltorsini]

Hi All,

I thought I would post a few shots of the weatherproof case I've been working on over the last week or so - 2gig with all the bells and whistles. From a hardware perspective everything went together very well, I'll be adding a cell card, the photo/temp/humidity sensors and the zwave when it arrives.

Software with Android is slow and buggy, haven't started tuning on it yet so any advice is welcome at this point.

---

---

---

I used a template of the screen to scribe the dimensions of only the backlit portion of the screen into a Dykem outline painted on the cover

---

A rounded nose end mill to cut the outline of the screen into the housing

---

The cover face is sturdy enough with the ribbing to allow you to cut almost fully through from the interior

---

Carefully realign the cover face up and finish removing material from the face

---

Only the active portion of the screen should be visible when you've finished trimming

---

I used 1/8 x 1/4 3M car window sealing ribbon to mount the screen, be sure to align it well before it makes contact, once it is on it will never come off in one piece and it will never leak

---

It is a pretty close fit but the screen nestles under the acrylic mounting board without being in direct contact which should keep it from overheating, note the backup battery mounted to the acrylic plate

---

The ribbon cables for the camera and screen are just long enough to reach when mounted, the metal bracket on the right holds the camera in place over its view hole in the cover

---

Removing the cover from the PoE splitter allowed will allow you to machine the case for a tight fit, use black silicone RTV to secure it to the case and screen

---

I've split out the speaker and mic ports and flush mounted them to the case, you can see the PoE splitter to the very right

---

---

The battery leads are just long enough to glue the battery to the door of the case using a high temperature non expanding adhesive

---

Depending on how the battery temperature looks as the unit cycles, you can use the material removes for the screen as a heat exchanger to improve cooling and battery life

---

You can see the front mount camera view hole to the left of the screen, be very careful on it's placement to minimize stress on the ribbon

---

I also added two sealed microswitches by milling down the existing bolt hole bosses and threading them in from the back, these are the on and reset buttons

---

Final product has handle/wall mount and an improved wireless antenna.  The external antenna made a big difference in the performance of the wireless card

[montero65]

That looks awesome! Great job! What are you using this setup for, if you don't mind me asking? Or was it more just to be able to do it?

[ltorsini]

That looks awesome!  Great job!  What are you using this setup for, if you don't mind me asking?  Or was it more just to be able to do it?

Thanks.  

The intent was to use it as a physical demo of a handheld energy meter we're developing that allows IoT control across a meshnet of similar devices. We're using wireless CTs to collect the energy data, WiFi/Zigbee/Zwave to connect to the devices.  I was looking for similar devices more than a year ago when I came across the Pine and saw that the team had collected most of the components we were looking at and developed this interesting little board.

It's not quite what we need but a good demo of the form factor and a few of the capabilities.

[montero65]

Very cool, thanks for the update on that. I like that when you couldn't find what you needed, you were able to build one yourself. Always neat to see what people are doing with their boards.

[ltorsini]

Happy to report that, after some testing, the Android problems were all due to a defective SD card. It all runs quite well on a Samsung EVO+

[ltorsini]

I've added the temp/humidity and photocell boards to the case.  Now we just need a solution to run these with the Android platform.

Humidity/temp sensor. A little black RTV on the o-ring and this unit will seal watertight, the o-ring is just thick enough to keep the pins from grounding on the case.


A blob of clear silicone to protect the pins from shorting and adhering to the case. 
Photocell at the right.


Add a fine mesh screen between the humidity/temp sensor to keep the debris infiltration to a minimum, clear plastic on the photocell.


Mesh guard from the front; to keep the bits out



Glued to the case with silicone, sealed up and wired - ready to run.


A couple new, small penetrations for the case.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[MarkHaysHarris777]

nice mounting trick... thanks for sharing !

[KablammoNick]

Hi, what are you using for Zigbee interface?

[ltorsini]

Hi, what are you using for Zigbee interface?

No ZigBee radio yet, Tllim just had it reshipped. We're testing enocean at the moment with the 300 USB on Android but still early days. I'm hoping openHAB will be a good option for the ZigBee kit.

[KablammoNick]

Hi, what are you using for Zigbee interface?

No ZigBee radio yet,  Tllim just had it reshipped.  We're testing enocean at the moment with the 300 USB on Android  but still early days.  I'm hoping openHAB will be a good option for the ZigBee kit.

Cheers, hoping to add Zigbee to my HASS build, but would rather an internal radio board to keep it neat... hopefully the one from Pine64 uses the Euler bus as the RPi bus is full with Z-wave board.