After the unboxing I had a very good look at all the parts. I also assembled one of the Pibow cases and fiddled around a bit with the cables. Then it was time to visit the local DIY store to find the parts for the base of the cluster.
I intend to make the cluster as tidy as possible, with as less cables visible as possible. Most clusters you find online have lots of cable poking out and that just does not look nice. I also wanted to make a base that hides the switch and hub completely. As I have pretty decent woodworking skills (see this image of a turntable I recently made a new base for) I wanted to work with wood again. But finding a nice pice of wood is hard in the Dutch DIY stores. Most of the wood is plain soft timber wood, hard wood is difficult to find. But in the third DIY store I found a nice piece of oak that will be perfect for the clusters base (and about 10 more I guess, as it was 2,5 metres long…).
I also bought some extra RJ-45 plugs and some aluminium pipe to make the stays for the Pi’s as well as some other small stuff.
Now I have all the parts to finally get to work!
Raspberry Pi Cluster 