RPi 3 in a metal Case

[warrenden]

There are some very nice metal cases which make the RPi look like a “proper” bit of kit worthy of being added to your boat's nav equipment.

Unfortunately they would kill the internal wifi of an RPi 3.

You could fix this by adding an external dongle as you would have done for previous Pis.  But then you’d have 2 wifis operative.

Has anyone tried unscrambling the resulting confusion?  Is it possible in OpenPlotter?

Thanks for comment,

Andrew

[baltika_no_9]

Hi Andrew

It should be a relatively simple task to disable the native wlan adapter on the RPi 3 via the OS. Having two WiFi adapters isn't a problem anyway; I use the both the native one and a USB dongle so that OpenPlotter can act as an access point. However as you point out if the RPi is in a metal case then its usefulness could be severely curtailed and in that case better to disable it.

Chris

[abarrow]

I've used two PI 3s in metal cases. WiFi isn't as strong, but I can still get a good signal all over my boat. If I want to set up a repeater, I put on an external dongle for a second WiFi input and use that for connection to marina WiFi or whatever. Having two WiFis is really no problem.

The one I'm using now has a small fan, and had enough space for me to mount a small real time clock module. Works fine for both internal WiFi and Bluetooth.

[warrenden]

I've used two PI 3s in metal cases. WiFi isn't as strong, but I can still get a good signal all over my boat. If I want to set up a repeater, I put on an external dongle for a second WiFi input and use that for connection to marina WiFi or whatever. Having two WiFis is really no problem.

The one I'm using now has a small fan, and had enough space for me to mount a small real time clock module. Works fine for both internal WiFi and Bluetooth.

Thanks abarrow that's useful information. 

Do you use marina wifi to create a local boat hotspot with the Pi?  What software do you use for this?  Does it run alongside OpenPlotter?

Andrew

[abarrow]

Do you use marina wifi to create a local boat hotspot with the Pi?  What software do you use for this?  Does it run alongside OpenPlotter?

You can just plug in a second WiFi adapter and in the AP section of OpenPlotter setup, change from Ethernet to that adapter. 

[warrenden]

Thanks very much.

Now we have the RPi 3 (much more powerful than previous Pis), OpenPlotter is a very serious tool.

Does your RPi run very hot? would you say the fan is desireable?

Andrew

[abarrow]

Does your RPi run very hot?  would you say the fan is desireable?

I haven't noticed that it runs very hot - I do have heat sinks and the fan. When I'm running OpenCPN I notice that CPU usage never exceeds 50% for any length of time.

I got the case with the fan thinking that I might decide to overclock the RPI at some time in the future. I've been loading applications on it, for example I also run a Squeezebox server and Squeezelite music player on the same RPI. It seems to run fine.