Acrylic RePhone Case

June 1st, 2018 (10th grade)

They say you should put the most interesting part above the fold so people keep reading.

While at Maker Faire I was at a panel where they gave RePhone kits to everyone present—very generous considering the kits retail for $60!

The contents of the RePhone Kit Create from Seeed Studio.

The only problem with the kit was its flimsy cardboard case. While a neat design (it folds up like origami and is even reversible), it wasn’t usable for any real application:

The stock case for the 'RePhone Kit Create,' if you can call it a case at all.

In comparison, the acrylic case I designed is more durable, mountable, waterproof (with the addition of a silicone gasket), can be lasercut (either en masse, at home, or ordered from a service such as DirtyPCBs Laser Cuts—i.e. Shenzhen), and is transparent/looks cool.

I killed many metaphorical birds with one stone with this project in that I learned a lot about Fusion 360 (which I had only picked up a few months prior to this project) and industrial design, learned how to program the weird MCU on the RePhone board, made some money (well, broke even) selling the cases, and finally found a use for the RePhone kit gathering dust in the form of a bike computer.

As I described this project on Thingiverse:

This is a case for the Seeed Studio RePhone. I originally designed this to mount on my e-bike so (with custom firmware) I could get GPS directions, track my bike, check battery levels, etc. Because of this it doesn’t have a space for the sound board that comes in the RePhone Kit Create but instead has an additional space for a Xadow GPS v2 board.

In total this case holds:

This case is designed to be lasercut out of 3mm acrylic. I ordered mine from DirtyPCBs. (I still have a couple—you have to order at least 5—so if you want to buy one including screws & nuts for $10 + shipping email me at rephonecases4sale@outlook.com.) For assembly you will also need 4 M4 machine screws about 35mm in length and 4 M4 nuts (preferably nylon locking nuts).

Because the case was originally designed to mount on my bike, the bottom layer has two slots for gluing in a 3D printed mount (not uploaded because it is specific to my use case & model of bike). An alternate design for the first layer is included without the slots in the bottom for standalone use.

The design is also 3D-printable: STLs are included in printable.zip. Even though they worked fine for me during prototyping, I wouldn’t recommend actually using the 3D printed version since it wouldn’t be as waterproof as the acrylic version (I sealed the display on my prototype with Sugru for biking in the rain), it wouldn’t have as good tolerances, and most importantly it wouldn’t look as cool :).

The assembled RePhone case.

The assembled RePhone case from the left side.

The assembled RePhone case from the right side.

The assembled RePhone case from a top-down perspective.

All parts, including the 3D printed prototype, for the RePhone case laid out to assemble.

Again, if by any chance you have a RePhone kit and want one of these cases, I still have a few left. A kit, including the acrylic parts, screws and nuts but no actual RePhone hardware, is $10 + shipping. Email me for more information.