The housing I chose was a genuine oddball one -- it came, believe it or not, from a rusted-out contactor that died inside my mother's air conditioner! I junked the parts, cleaned out the rust, and had me a nice solid (ish), flanged black little box for something with an odd lid to it.

OK, *most* of the rust! But there you go ;) I used a nibbler tool, the kind PC modders know about, to cut a notch in the body for the USB port of the Arduino Nano, and for the other cables. (That notch got deeper later on.)

The housing ended up working, but BOY was it tight getting everything to fit! I wish I'd had something just a bit bigger that wasn't cut half to shreds... oh well :-/

The LCD didn't work out, either... sure, I hooked it up fine... ish...

"Ish" ;)

But the code won't get up and go :( so that's moved to "Stage Two" -- i.e., "I'll argue with it when I'm not tired and there isn't a highly-important deadline looming dangerously close -- one that I can't move!"

Ugh.

Yes, that is a lot of pin-bending ;) the LCD is 2mm pitch, as is the LCD-signal cable... the backpack is *entirely* 2.54mm / 0.1in pitch everywhere... a needlenose pliers and a bit of spare wire were quite handy in dealing with the discrepancies. No shorts!