Servo board enclosure

There was a real fight to retain some kind of IR capability, including modeling an opening for it & trying to glue it.  There never was a good way of mounting it.  The fact is it's not going to be used.  The best mounting solution might eventually be PLA riveting down a separate box which surrounds the back of the IR sensor.   In the mean time, it just flops around.

The tripod mounting evolved to a more compact puck which bolts on.  The puck is of course modeled after a certain rocket engine injector plate.

Then, the servo board just hooks onto the puck.  The servo wires hook up to umbillicals.  The ziploc bag gets chewed up by the gear & sticks down too far.  It needs a more permanent gear shroud, but there's no way to farsten a PLA shroud to the aluminum.  The puck still doesn't attach firmly to the tripod.  It needs indentations on the underside for the set screws to grab onto but any PLA is just going to flex.

  There is a desire to make an alternative puck for clamping it on a bench, but whatever replaces the puck still needs to allow the servo board to hook on.  The bare aluminum can clamp on, but isn't very secure.  This system has been years in the making.  It started before lions had any semblance of a real bench.

Pan/tilt head finally got gear shrouds.  These actually stay in place passively, but can be wired in for transport.  Sadly, they're too flimsy & delaminate.

The flash mounting is still unsolved.  It was originally just clamped onto a larger puck.  Then it seemed to migrate to another tripod.

All the USB ports on the jetson are powered by a common 5V.  This was bodged to make it do the full 2A.

Next, time to scavenge parts from the 1st enclosure.  It would have made a hell of a portable TV, 40 years ago, when just getting a moving picture to appear on anything was a miracle.  We just don't use portable TV's anymore.  The overhead expansion slots worked, even if they were hard to get the cards out of.  The battery door stopped latching.  The swinging back door worked, even if the magnets were out of alignment.  It was quite sturdy despite being made of PLA.

Ideas for a wifi enclosure weren't a whole lot more compact.  They revolved around a bundle of excess wiring sized for the portable TV & the buck converter.  On top sits the jetson with ports facing up.  On the bottom sits the battery.  The power switch sticks out the top or the side.  Outlets for 12V & 5V stick out the side to power a flash.  The wiring could be resoldered again to move the outlets to the top. 

The result was a self contained jetson nano module.  Helas, the USB ports no longer worked.  They all had 5V but couldn't detect anything anymore.  It seems the external 5V puts them into device mode.  Plugging in ethernet puts them into host mode.  A kernel recompile without OTG support might work.

The power supply ended up being a $25 Castle Creations 10A.  These are super compact & make a lot more power than the LM2596. 

Fully assembled tripod head for historic purposes.