The Raspberry Pi is famous for its extremely small footprint. But when something is famous, it must be immortalized in a super-sized statue. That’s why Toby Roberts, a Maker in Residence at Raspberry Pi, crafted a massive version of the tiny microcomputer.
While this 6x scale model of the Raspberry Pi 4B isn’t “functional,” it’s a very accurate representation of the real thing. The color of the “board” is perfect, and it’s covered in all the appropriate lettering and logos. Even the giant SD card bears a Raspberry Pi logo, and to top things off, a functional LED is plugged into the model’s “GPIO pins.”
Toby Roberts designed this model for theGrand Discoveries eventat the Grand Arcade shopping center. While we don’t know the full details of this build, it involves “3D printing, laser cutting, and etching, as well as woodworking.” Individual components were made in CAD software, and everything’s mounted on a 9mm-thick piece of MDF. Of course, the logos were printed from laser-cut stencils.
And while this model didn’t need a functional LED, Toby Roberts added one anyway. It’s a nice nod to the “starter projects” often done by first-time Raspberry Pi users. Anyway, the LED is the most technical thing here, as it’s controlled by a Raspberry Pi Pico running a MicroPython script. The LED itself is made of twelve NeoPixels in a 3D-printed enclosure (with a fake resistor).
Related:This Giant Nose Uses a Raspberry Pi to “Smell”
All in all, this is a very fun and impressive project. Though Toby Roberts notes that this is not the largest Raspberry Pi model—previously, a 10x model was made byMichael Castor and Christian Moist. And several years ago, Zach Hipps ofByte Sized Engineeringbuilt a 12x replica of the Raspberry Pi 3B.
The 6x Raspberry Pi 4B model will be shown during the Grande Arcade shopping center’sGrand Discoveries event. This event runs until the end of July 24th, so if you’re in Cambridge, rush on over to the shopping center now. You’ll see this model on the shopping center’s first floor, where a Raspberry Pi store is also located.
