Accessories

Sweetbox – most impractical case ever?

by  •  • 19 Comments

I don’t normally criticise cases on my blog, but this one caught my eye.

Sweetbox _ The perfect case for your Raspberry Pi computer by Grasping hand — Kickstarter.

There are so many reasons why this case is a dead-loss:

  1. No access to the GPIO or other pin sets.
  2. It seems to be custom-designed to use specific heatsinks which, I note, are being offered as part of the case. So, if you’ve already fitted some sinks this case isn’t for you.
  3. No ventilation.
  4. Yet again no protection for an SD card [edit] although the micro-SD card adapters will fit, according to the FAQ.
  5. It’s ergonomic… which is lovely for keyboards but is of no practical use for a Pi.
  6. It’s a snug fit which, given the micro differences between various revisions, is unlikely to fit every Pi.
  7. It’s £15 for the case and heat sinks. Too expensive for the mass market, in my opinion.

I won’t be backing this one.

19 comments for “Sweetbox – most impractical case ever?”

  1. Surely you can fix 1, 2 and 3 with a sharp knife 😉
    I guess its good if you have zero space but like you say its a lot of money when there are so many cheaper choices out there.

    Reply

  2. I think this case would be perfect to use the Pi for automotive use, it is small enough to fit it under a car seat or under the dashboard

    Reply

  3. Hi Michael,

    happy new year, thanks for your review, even if it wasn’t a kind good one, it really helped us a lot,

    a few answers:

    1. You are perfectly right, and in fact we believe it’s the strongest critic that could be made. We decided today to produce 2 versions of our case, one with GPIO access and one without (and every backers will choose in the end the one he wants). We will post an update in the forthcoming days on kickstarter about it.

    True, if you have mounted already heatsinks on our raspberry and you cannot (or don’t want to) remove them, it’s no use to buy Sweetbox. But we are quite proud to have designed the first heatsinks especially made for the raspberry.

    Until now, the tests that we made showed us that no ventilation was required, but we have to conduct more tests this month (and take precise measure that we can publish)

    MiniSD card adapter fits in the case as recently mentioned in the FAQ

    In fact we never found any of those ergonomic keyboards practical! By ergonomic, we meant that our case was the lightest and smallest case that you could actually find and that you could grab it well when manipulating it.

    True, but it’s true for all cases, if the next generation of raspberries are 1cm larger, none will fit. Actually, Sweetbox is fitting perfectly all Models B. For the model A, there will be gaps, but it’s also true for all cases except if one was especially designed for it, and then it won’t fit any Model B.

    If you consider that heatsinks and free shipping worldwide are included it’s definitely not, on the contrary it’s a super good deal, and the price of 23£ for the classic is also a very good one, if we reach the minimal amount requested, we won’t make any money, it’s a risk that we are taking, even we will probably loose some now that we decided to make the two versions. Most of the cases that we saw for the raspberry are made of cheap plastic, and for sure if we had chose one of those for our case, we could have decreased the cost by a lot.We also chose to inject our cases in Europe, to be able to completely control the excellent level of injection and finish of the product, the qualities translucency’s effects, and of course it does have a cost too.

    All the best,
    Graspinghand

    Reply

    • I appreciate you responding personally. Thanks for addressing my concerns. I’ll be interested to see if you do get the funding, and wish you well towards that goal. Anything that’s for the Pi is good for the Pi.

      Reply

  7. Hi guys,

    We are proudly and officially presenting our new product: the ScorPi, a flexible arm for the Raspberry Pi Camera Board freshly released. It holds the camera steady in any direction you choose. It is easy, intuitive and extremely handy.

    http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/677951563/sweetbox-ii-the-perfect-case-for-your-raspberry-pi/posts

    The ScorPi is designed to work with any or no case at all, for all those Pi fanatics that have eagerly been expecting the camera board over the last months.

    We hope you enjoy,
 please tell us what you think about it

    by the way the project get funded today !

    Best regards,

    Graspinghand

    Reply

    • Oh, I love the ScorPi. Lovely idea using the composite port. I believe you’re first to market with that. Might be an idea to contact cyntech.co.uk if you’re looking for a wider distributor.

      Reply

          • Hi Michael,

            Yes, we want it to be available on e-shops as soon as possible, but in a second time, when we will have produced the project and deliver it to all of our backers,

            pledging for it now on kickstarter is definitely the best way to be one of the first to have it and at the best price,

            best regards,
            GHz

  8. Sweetbox case and ScorPi camera mount in stock !

    After its successful founding on Kickstarter, the smallest Raspberry Pi case and the flexible camera mount are finally on sale at our shop http://www.graspinghand.com !

    Only a few Sweetbox are left from the first batch and ready to ship. The next batch will be available for pre-order.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.