Lasercut Plywood Board for Raspberry Pi

Need a quick way how to attach a LED, a push button and two resistors to the Raspberry Pi header? One way is to use some 'flying' wires. Or to use three pieces of lasercut plywood for a nice looking Raspy extension board:

Wood circuit board on Raspberry Pi.

Breadboards for electronics are a great way to make a temporary circuit. But what if that circuit should last a bit longer, and there is no time to create a 'real' PCB? I have found that making a plywood lasercut board is actually another way:

What triggered this was the need to have around 30 boards for students to wire a LED and a push button to the Raspberry Pi. But there was no real way to get a board done over the weekend. Instead, I have cut things out of plywood:

Lasercut boards.

The boards are designed in Inkscape with three pieces:

1. Top piece (left) with a "silkscreen"
2. Middle piece as a spacer
3. Bottom piece (right) to as a distance holder to the Raspy bottom

Components are THT and holes keep them in place:

Top of the boards.

The wires on the bottom are soldered together with he header on the side:

Bottom of the boards.

One piece is used as a spacer:

And finally, with the bottom board, to close everything:

The three pieces then are glued together to build a block:

Assembled version.

This nicely plugs now on the top of the Raspberry Pi board:

That hack worked out very well: it is solid, very cheap (I re-used small scrap parts of plywood) and it works nicely.

Happy woodboarding!