I just received 10 x official Grove Pi cases and put one of the kits in it and noticed a couple of obvious issues with the case. D4 is hidden behind one of the corner posts and the hole in the top of the case is not properly aligned with D5 and D6. See attached photo with highlights of problem areas. Given the price of these cases, this is a problem.
In the kit is what I think is an extra brass post and nut - just wondering what it is for? Attached is a photo of it with a USA quarter for scale.
I added the extra post as a Grove Pi board stabilizer by fastening it to the Grove Pi between D2 and D3, so the other end sits on the screw holding the Pi down between the audio port and the back of the network socket. Not sure if that was what it was for - no instructions came with the case and the picture on the packaging isn’t any help.
Hi Mitchvh, we have an assembly video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-agV6CDrsY
The post can block D4; if you need to use it, you can remove the post. That smaller male by female is for this purpose; if you place it in the holes in the middle of the board, it should lend you some augmented support, giving you a little flexibility about where you place and where you remove the supporting posts.
It sounds like you figured this out though.
I put the video up maybe a week ago, and I put the video in the assembly instructions and the product description. WHere did you go looking for assembly instructions? Maybe if you tell me where you initially started looking, I can make finding this info easier for other folks. Your help here is really appreciated!
Best, John
Hi John;
Thank you for the reply. There were no instructions in the package and truthfully, I didn’t even think to look on youtube. It is a helpful video, so maybe you can put a link on the packaging in the future.
After a bit of trial and error, I mostly figured it out. My case had short screws with bigger heads and longer screws with smaller heads, which confused me temporarily, but I found that I needed to use the short screws with the short posts otherwise the screws met each other in the short post and they wouldn’t tighten all the way.
I found that putting the male/female post in as a spacer made the grove pi board slant up away from the GPIO, which likely puts stress on the GPIO pins, so I took the extra post back off. I am still not eactly clear what it is for, since your video doesn’t have that piece.
The alignment of the slot in my top is still not correct, but that isn’t an issue in your video, so obviously the cases are different - the logo on mine is a bit smaller, so that is a hint. I think the top is aligned with the Grove Pi, but when it is plugged into the Pi it gets offset.
It turns out that I am not using D4, D5 or D6, so it isn’t a big deal, I just found it strange that the top slot doesn’t align, given this is a Grove Pi custom case.
We want to deploy 10+ of these devices in our facility, running Windows 10 IoT Core, streaming to Azure as an IoT showcase, but we are having stability issues with the ported C# library code (separate post). Karan is awesome, but he doesn’t appear to be a C# dev. Is there anyone else that can look at this? The guys that did the C# port are 3rd parties, who haven’t responded, and have likely moved onto other things. I am in Seattle next week and may be able to talk with the IoT Core team, but the error I am getting appears to be an I/O error on a write to the Grove Pi, so I anticipate they will throw it back to you.
Thanks
Mitch
Hi Mitch,
I appreciate your detailed response back about this. We had a small batch we made at our local hackerspace to cover us when we ran out briefly in November. These might have come out differently sized and not caught. If you’d like, we can try to send a replacement and it if fits differently, we’ll replace the whole lot of them. I would just send a message through general contact here http://www.dexterindustries.com/contact/ and Amber will be able to help.
As for the C# library, no one on our team is an expert in the Win10 IoT Core and all of our libraries for the GrovePi and the GoPiGo are supported by folks that have volunteered some time and effort to make it happen. If you have a Github issue you’ve opened up, I can try to reach out and gently nudge/ask about it. Can you post a link?
Thanks Mitch. Best,
John