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Pi On The Wall – wall mounted home server – Part 1: Introduction
I’ve been working away at an idea I had that seemed too good to sit on, so jumped at it. It’s easier to explain the purpose in an image:
I’ve been meaning to set up my Raspberry Pi to monitor the Heatmiser WiFi thermostat I use, as well as being a small home server. I have a standard wall mount plate free in the hall of our house, the sort of thing the above would mount into and be wired direct to mains for 24/7 operation. I thought it would be cool to take a cheap thermostat, gut it, and replace it’s internals with Pi goodness – throwing in a colour touchscreen for good measure.
The Pi On The Wall was born.
I discovered a cheap thermostat on Amazon which had mains power to 5v built in. The power unit may need to be replaced which is something I’ll write about later, but as you can see there is not much space in here for a Raspberry Pi and associated TFT screen, WiFi stick, SD card, etc.
There will be quite a bit of customization going on. The Pi board itself doesnt fit in here for length, let alone it plus the standard PiTFT mount for depth.
That’s not going to look good on the wall.
I’m quite progressed with this project as I type this, and will post a few updates shortly. Spoilers: In total, the current depth of the Pi + TFT is currently 14mm. This is after some serious hacking at the board itself. It’s not pretty, but it’s working. There are some fun hacks in here to share!
 [Part 2 can be found here – showing how the Pi + TFT slims down to only 10mm!]
To be continued… if you are too impatient for the next part, i’ll be updating the following flickr album with various shots, and posting on my @domipheus twitter.