Supplier: ModMyPi
Price: £2.99 – £5.99 (plus delivery)

Rating: 6/10

Another case review. This is for the widely-available ModMyPi case. I purchased two of these cases for £2.99 each. They were ‘GAMBLE Mix N Match‘ cases which means I did not know when I ordered what colours I would get.

As it turns out, I received blue and red top halves and black and white bottom halves, which I was pleased with. There were slight differences between the two bottom halves – one had holes for the mount points on Rev 2 Pis, the other didn’t.

These are well-made cases using good-quality plastic. I have no doubt that they provide good protection for the Pi.

Below is a picture of my Blue-White combo case. Please ignore the flaky white stuff (this is polymorph which I was using to make something else and it stuck to the case).

Here’s the Pi inside the bottom half of the case.

When placing the Pi inside the bottom half of the case, I noticed that it wasn’t a tight fit and I was hoping that the top half of the case would have kept the Pi solidly in place. However, the top doesn’t contain anything to do this and as a result the Pi does move around a fair amount (about 2mm) when shaken. This is disappointing as it means that the Pi could possibly become damaged in transit.

The external ports of the Pi are all easily available and I had no problem connecting all my peripherals to it.

In terms of accessing the GPIO pins, the makers of the case provide a ‘cut-out’ area above the pins. This requires cutting out some plastic ‘struts’ (as seen in the top picture above). I had to use a Dremel rotary cutter to do it properly (see my efforts below) but, because the slot is close to the side of the case, it’s difficult to do the job neatly. As you can see, my cutting job wasn’t the cleanest.

Getting the ribbon cable out of the case is difficult if you don’t cut out enough of the slot and, in fact,  the area given to you to cut-out isn’t big enough. Lots of trial and errors required here. I would have been a lot happier if the slot had been covered by an easily-removable piece of plastic rather than something that needs a specialist tool to cut out!

Overall, these are good cases if you want something cheap and don’t mind taking the lucky dip of the GAMBLE. I wouldn’t pay £6 for one for two reasons: The loose-fitting of the Pi inside and the GPIO slot. It’s a pity as the build quality of the product is very strong.

Update: Later versions of the cases (such as those now on sale at ModMyPi) have push-out sections for the GPIO and are apparently a slightly better fit. So, say 8/10 with those modifications.