I wanted to make my Raspberry Pi look good, be accessible, and be protected. I decided to house it in an old metal socket set box my dad gave me a while back. Besides the fact that the box was free and looks pretty awesome, I chose it because it has plenty of room. I’ve always wanted my Pi to be portable, so I purchased an Anker Astro3 external battery pack. I chose this model for a few reasons…
- It’s under $50 (with a significant discount on Amazon).
- The charge is extremely high - 10,000 mAh. I was able to get over 13 hours uptime running the Pi without a full charge on the battery.
- It fits perfectly in my box. Most external batteries with comparable capacities are too big, and a smaller one would have moved around more than I like.
- It can charge and distribute power simultaneously.
I’m also planning on using the battery for river trips and long car rides.
I used electrical tape to make a Raspberry Pi logo on the top of the box, then dremeled out holes for the ports (a good first use of the dremel).
I purchased some Sugru to stabilize the pi inside the box, then decided to make some removable caps for the ports I don’t often use with the excess. I also used Sugru to prop up the battery, and I can store extra OS’s on SD cards under it.
