Stylish & Customizable Aluminum Enclosure for NVIDIA Jetson Nano

Seems like NVIDIA Jetson Nano Orin is finally coming out of a long lasting shortage and it is easier to buy. I got one off Amazing last week and made a new stylish aluminum case for it in one day! 

Here’s it is:

How did I do all that in one day? 

The answer is I didn’t, only making the Nano Jetson enclosure took me one day.

But how? Okay let me explain. 

Around 1.5 years ago, I got into this problem. I was preparing to launch my product into the market that is based on Raspberry Pi 4, then all of a sudden, Raspberry Pi 5 came into the market.

A lot of folks were asking me whether we will have support for Pi 5 down the road or not, and soon enough this question was extended to other types of single board computers etc. 

The problem was that Pi 5 moved the location of the ethernet port. This meant I needed to design a new enclosure for it. 

I previously had this idea to make a generalizable/customizable, yet stylish enclosure that does not look like a piece of junk, and use swappable modules on a common chassis to create a versatile and extendable enclosure. 

I had tried to keep things as modular as possible in my original design but this was testing the limits of my modular design.

So I thought to myself, what if I make the real panel swappable to accommodate various port hole configurations? So I sketched up the design and sent it to my manufacturer and got some samples. We updated CNC’s post-processing program to add some grooves to allow the rear panel slide in place.

I did this video short:

When I bought the NVIDIA Jetson Nano, I knew I had to make this.

So I spent a few hours designing the insert tray that holds Jetson Nano, the rear panel, and 3D printed them. I had to iterate a few times to get it to some acceptable level for the first prototype. I am planning to refine the insert tray since it is a tool less setup (snap-fit) and I have not yet gotten the pleasurable snap click 😀

More about the enclosure

The top material is made of blank PCB. It is an invitation and signal that you can make a functional PCB if you want. Around the PCB, goes a translucent light diffuser ring (made out of polycarbonate). This is the original ring I used in Ubo Pod design. If you end up putting some light inside the closure, this can make it visible from outside.

I am planning to add an extra PWM fan at the bottom to improve airflow and overall cooling.

What other SBCs does this work with?

The extrusion profile is designed to fit any board of side ITX Pico and smaller; As long as all the ports are accessible from behind, and the SBC fits the profile of the enclosure (units in mm):

So, is this just a case?

This, by itself, is an enclosure. But it is part of a larger project that is exploring and hopefully innovating on both form and function with hardware and software co-design.

My goal is to turn this into an LLM model hosting machine (open source) with easy headless control (I am calling it Ubo Compute node right now). You can learn more about the parent project here: https://getubo.com

If you are interested in joining the party, here is your Discord invite link.

Ok, can I buy it?

Yes, but you have to wait. Right now I am releasing Ubo Pro 4 / 5 models into the market and offering this as an optional add-on during my campaign for building an Ubo Compute node. If you are just interested in the enclosure, you can get it on Kickstarter by pledging $1 and adding this as an add-on for $49. 

This will be ready for general availability in Q2 2020 on my Shopify page.