A Tiny Wooden Raspberry Pi Laptop

Sometimes you have an idea for a project, leading you to buy parts for a new build. In the case of this tiny wooden laptop by Kieran (AKA “makefailrepeat"), he purchased a Pimoroni 4” HyperPixel at MakersCentral, which itself inspired him to assemble his own mini laptop.

As shown in the video below, the case for this contraption is beautifully made out of sections of wood, glued together and smoothed with an orbital sander. To help set this off, Kieran chiseled a design into the wooden surface, and inserted pieces of flat copper strip by hammering them into place. After more gluing and processing, he added a power supply socket on one side and a nice metal button switch on the other.

To make it act a bit more like a laptop, he created a hinge mechanism in Fusion 360, along with bezel plates to surround the screen and keyboard. The Raspberry Pi 3/screen assembly slides into the unit and 2200mAh of power is supplied via a UPS HAT. The keyboard sits in the lower portion of the little laptop, and while it can communicate over Bluetooth, it’s attached to one of the Raspberry Pi’s USB ports to provide power.

It’s a fun little build and a neat demonstration of what you can do with a Pi combined with a bit of woodworking!