is a matter of personal
choice, taste, and budget.
When I started thinking
about how I would do it, I
looked around my shop and
found some leftover baltic
birch (BB) plywood and
some 1/8” black translucent
sheet plastic/acrylic that I
had from past projects.
So, that is what I
decided to use. I will
describe what I did in the
hope it will be helpful at
least for a starting point in
whatever you do if you
decide to build a music
player for yourself. Note if
you use a different USB
sound module than I did
you may have to alter the
dimensions given in the
discussion that follows.
First thing I did was to
figure out the size of the
enclosure I needed to build
to house all of the
components: RPi, Flash
drive, USB sound module,
etc. So, I plugged all of the
components together and
with a ruler determined the
minimum volume necessary.
I decided the internal
dimensions had to be at
least 2-1/2” deep by 6”
wide and 1-1/8” tall. Past
experience told me it was
not a good idea to try and
minimize the enclosure size,
so I decided on slightly larger internal dimensions of 3”
deep by 7” wide and 1-1/4” tall. This size would allow
me to easily fit all of the required components.
Next, I decided that the enclosure I was to make
from BB would need to have at least a 1/2” thick border
to make it structurally rigid. So, the outside dimension of
the enclosure would be 8” by 4”. To achieve the desired
height, I would need to glue 3/4” and 1/2” pieces of the
BB plywood together. With that decided, I made a
template out of 1/4” MDF that was 8” by 4”. I rounded
the corners of the template for a more sleek look
(IMHO). I marked the template with an arrow to indicate
the top front side.
On my router table, I set up a flush cutting bit with a
bearing on the bottom that would ride on the template
August 2015 43
■ Photo 2. Internal view of the music player.
■ Photo 1. Case/enclosure during construction.
Resources
The following websites have information pertinent to this
discussion:
• The website of the developer of the Pi MusicBox
software is www.woutervanwijk.nl/pimusicbox/.
• A forum for users of the Pi MusicBox software is
available at https://discuss.mopidy.com/c/pi-musicbox.
• A list of FAQs about the Pi MusicBox is available at
www.woutervanwijk.nl/pimusicbox/faq.html.
• The Pi MusicBox manual is available at
www.woutervanwijk.nl/pimusicbox/MusicBox_
Manual.pdf.