When the Raspberry Pi Foundation combined design, love, attention to detail, accuracy, iteration, and “damn hard work,” it came up with the first official Raspberry Pi case. The organization behind the popular micro PC recently announced a new enclosure designed for the Pi 2.
The popular micro-PC, which sells for $35, famously comes with little else other than a circuit board and the components. Sourcing everything else from the case to the monitor, keyboard, power supply, and operating system is left up to the user.
The official case is available now in the U.S. for $8.59 from MCM Electronics, with other retailers soon to follow. While it might sound mundane, this is actually a neat little home for your Pi board. The enclosure is white on the outside and a raspberry red color on the inside. The external white sides and top are removable to give you access to your Pi without having to remove it from the case.
After removing the white top, you get an opening to access the GPIO pins, as well as openings on each side for access to other components. The inner enclosure features pins that allow you to place the board securely on its mounting holes. MCM Electronics calls it the highest quality enclosure its seen for the Raspberry Pi 2.
The case doesn’t feature a fancy acrylic top to view the Pi while it’s computing all those 1s and 0s–a popular choice for many users. But if you want easy access to your Pi for various projects then this case looks like a great choice.
The story behind the story: This appears to the first, or at least one of the few, products that is actually produced by the Raspberry Pi Foundation itself. The group usually concerns itself with designing the hardware and then licensing manufacturing rights to a third party. For the case, however, the Foundation decided to design it in collaboration with product development firm Kinneir Dufort and then work intensely to get the tooling and plastic molding just right. You can read the entire story of the case’s 2.5-year journey from idea to finished product on the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s blog.