Maker Challenge Day 11: PyPortal Stand

Continuing my efforts to avoid making useless things just to fill up a slot in the challenge, I made a replacement for the case that came with my PyPortal. The original got destroyed in an unfortunate incident involving high school freshmen and a concrete floor. The PyPortal itself is a a fairly small board running CircuitPython, with integrated sensors and an LCD screen.

I’m definitely going to be making an improved version of this one. My goal was to have an adjustable-angle stand for my PyPortal, but the geometry of the base and supports are off a bit. I reused the base assembly as the support, and it turned out to be much too long. Still, it works for now and will keep they PyPortal safer than not having a case of any sort. In the next version, I’ll be making the support fold over the front to act as a protective cover for the screen.

To make the design, I started with Adafruit’s CAD repository. I modeled up the pieces of the case based on the model of the board, and then added the hinges and support/base to make the stand self-supporting and relatively compact.

Materials:

• 1/8” Baltic Birch from Ocooch Hardwoods
• Glue

PyPortal Stand by Jackie Gerstein is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.