Engineer David Guill’s latest project is by no means the first Raspberry Pi supercomputer, but it may just be the most beautiful.
Guill, a recent graduate of the masters in computer science and electrical engineering program at the University of Texas in Dallas, built the 40-node Raspberry Pi cluster for distributed software testing. In addition to a list of technical requirements, Guill wrote that he also wanted it to be “visually pleasing.”
“Since I was making a significant investment in this, I wanted it to be something I would be proud to show people for the next several years,” he said in a blog post that accompanies his video tour of the project.
In its clear acrylic case, which Guill designed and cut at Dallas Makerspace, all of the computer’s components are visible, organized and easily accessible. The RPi cards themselves are arranged in 10 rows of four cards each and connected by a rainbow of networking cables. These sit between networking gear on the bottom and a power supply at the top. Along the side are four cooling fans.
The clear case also makes for a fun display when the lights go out. The whole box glows with the red and blue lights of the 330 LEDs inside the case. Once Guill gets some software installed, the project will really shine!
See the full project specs and download the complete project plans from Guill’s website.