This post is a repost of a blog entry from 30th August 2015 on Kerbal Space Program forum (soon to be defunct).
The encasing is a 6 mm plywood box with ~15 mm wood lists that I screw
the modules to. It was a bit tight to frame the keyboard with plywood so
i had to use 4 mm acrylic glass there instead. In the back I mounted a
USB hub and a PS2 to USB converter for the keyboard. The "main" computer
is a small Arduino Pro Micro located to the right of the blue USB cable
that connects it to the USB hub.
The backplane bus is the heard of the whole console. It distributes 5
volt power and the I2C communication bus to all modules mounted in the
encasing. I've used two strips of veroboard with long copper strips to
build it and it consist only of a bunch of connector pins and two 4.7
kohm pull up resistors for the bus. I also added a totally meaningless
red miniature LED that indicates when the power strips are correctly
connected and powered.
A closer look at the "mainframe" and the networking fabric.
It also shows the connection to the bus extension to the left.
There is plenty of room for the long keyboard cable under the keyboard.
The keyboard isn't attached in any way into the box other than by a very
snug fit. I actually have to remove parts of the panels to get at good
grip to yank it out agan once it's in place.
The enclosure takes 9 modules (size 100x150 mm). All modules can (or
should be) placed anywhere. There is an exception as the display module
is the only module that follows the original design spec to the limit.
My specs was that there would be at least 10 mm clearance from all edges
of the module front. The wooden lists I use was 15 mm and it worked
well for all other modules as they had a little extra margin, but the
display module did not. That is the reason I had to remove some of the
wood where the display module is to be mounted.
Finally a little peek into the box when all modules are connected. I shot this just before popping the last one in place.
EDIT: Here's a couple of pictures of the whole thing assembled and labeled.
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