Raspberry Pi gets first official case

For three years, its naked circuit board has been gathering dust on the desktops of programming enthusiasts. Now, finally, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has launched an official case to house its microcomputer in.

The Official Raspberry Pi case is a convertible unit. In one configuration, the unit is almost fully enclosed with a white lid. Alternatively, a second snap-on red cover provides access to the internals. In either configuration, the case provides access to all the primary ports, including the micro SD slot, and the power and activity lights are still visible through the case. 

The case has been two-and-a-half years in the making, according to the Raspberry Pi Foundation, which has struggled to perfect the design. “We spent a lot of time asking the toolmakers to make changes and the moulding company to press out some new cases – and then being annoyed that they weren’t perfect,” says Gordon Hollingworth, the Foundation’s director of software, in a Raspberry Pi blog post.  “We went through literally dozens of imperfect iterations – lumps here and there, clips that didn’t clip, inconsistent colours, ill-fitting parts, bits dropping off the case, incongruously fragile and snappy corners – and eventually we gave up and moved our business to a company a little more used to the type of high quality injection moulding that we required.”

The end result is a case that “now clips together cleanly and stays clipped together, all the interfaces are ‘just right’ the colouring is perfect and it can be made in the quantities we were hoping for,” says Hollingworth.

The case costs only £6 from the Raspberry Pi Swag Store, with an additional £3 for delivery. It’s designed to fit the new Raspberry Pi 2, which was released earlier this year. There are all manner of third party cases available if the official model doesn’t float your boat.