I'm curious as to whether anyone has any good tips for how to mount a Bela Mini in an enclosure. There aren't any mounting holes so I'm scratching my head a bit for how to make sure it is nice and secure in a box. Any tips?
Tips for physically mounting a Bela Mini?
cable ties would work. Also, in case you are using breakout board, e.g.: to secure the wires from the analog in and digital I/O into place, you could then add screw holes on the breakout PCB.
Some kind of rubber foam to compress it into place from either side? Gotta be careful about fully encasing it in foam because of heat.
I just ordered one that is on its way so I am going to have to be thinking about this soon. Will be interested to see what ideas come about in this thread.
a month later
There are some 3d printed options on Thingiverse for the PocketBeagle. I imagine they could be re-purposed for Bela.
This one especially:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2554435
That way it can be mounted with M3 screw within an enclosure.
5 days later
- Edited
that could work, you'd need very long spacers and/or screws, though, to leave space for the Bela cape!
3 years later
hi, we are really struggling to mount the Bela Mini at different embedded instruments we are developing. I wanted to ask you @giuliomoro if including a couple of mounting screw holes in the next versions of the PCB couldn't be an interesting feature?
i always use a small perfboard/protoboard with some header pins soldered so they fit to the bela female headers. kind of like creating a shield for it. it takes up almost no space, you can drill holes in the perfboard and mount it anywhere and the connection to the belamini is non permanent but still very strong. the spacing on the bela mini headers is standard so that works as well. if you add external components to the belamini you can even do those connections via the perfboard.
enrique_tomas we are definitely planning to have mounting holes on the next generation of hardware. With Bela Mini we went for the smallest size over extending the footprint for mounting holes. Great suggestion from Lokki, we have often used a similar solution when mounting in instruments. Otherwise cable ties can be used for more space constrained situations as Giulio suggested.