I’m going to be putting the emonPi and RJ45 breakout board in our loft, and I think I should enclose the breakout board in some kind of case to prevent dust etc getting in and breaking things.
Would a small cardboard box suffice? I don’t know if the board is likely to get warm, and don’t want to have a fire risk!
Any other suggestions for enclosing the board?
If the breakout board gets warm, I’d be EXTREMELY surprised. There are no components to dissipate any power, it is just a printed circuit board with sockets.
If you’re that concerned, put it in a metal box (insulated from the metal of course) or put your cardboard box on a non-combustible surface such as a metal tray, or plasterboard.
To my mind, you’re in much greater danger from a mobile phone in your pocket.
Ok, thanks. I thought it should be fine but wanted to double check first!
Just be aware that a metal box will affect your wifi signal, if you use wifi. You can use a usb wifi adaptor with an external aerial, which can be a bit tricky to set up. I did this initially with mine and it worked well for a year. Then it got spiked. I had to re-install the OS, and I couldn’t get the wifi dongle going again for love nor money.
I was eventually able to locate the emonpi closer to my router, so now it’s in a sealed plastic electrical enclosure, purchased from an electrical supplier. I now use the on-board wifi and everything works fine.
Of course, you could always use Ethernet!
That’s a ridiculous statement. The breakout board is purely a parallel connection point between several RJ45 connectors. There’s no Wi-Fi involved at all.
If you meant, don’t put the emonPi in a metal box, then you need to make it clear that’s what you mean, because the original question was very specific, and did not ask about putting the emonPi inside a box of any description, neither did I suggest that.
Whoops. Sorry. Should have read the question more carefully. I thought both the emonpi and breakout board (whatever that is) were going in a box in the loft. Sorry to mislead.
One of these