Front panel for Intel NUCs for a 10 inch rack

 

 

Quite a while ago I bought a number of second hand Intel NUCs to create a Proxmox cluster.  It sat as a stack on my desk and it was annoying to turn on and off and was a complete mess of spaghetti wires.

To remedy I bought a 10 inch rack from GeeekPi and so began my journey to make it more usable and neater that the mess on my desk.

One of the things I really wanted was to have a front panel so I could stack the NUCs neatly in the rack and not have to move them about to turn them off and on.

Luckily the NUCs have a 2mm front panel header inside the case.

 

I  thought initially about cutting the case, but that was just a bit too destructive so I ordered some flat ribbon cable with 2mm IDC connectors to build a simple prototype.

I didn't know how I would mount the buttons and LEDs.  I wasn't keen on drilling or 3d printing so I picked up a  XLR HDMI rack panel from GeeekPi as it seemed an elegant way to mount what I needed.

Next I needed some measurements for the PCBs. Luckily there are plenty of them about for the XLR connectors, so I went about making a PCB for the panel.

And here we are:

The PCBS 

Installing the Ribbon cable to the front panel header

 

 

 

Front panel XLR PCB Installation  

Bill of Materials

• XLR PCB from PCBWay 

• Ribbon cable with 2mm IDC connectors (20 cm)
• Shrouded 2mm IDC header for PCB 
• Buttons for PCB 
• Red LED's for PCB 
• Green LED's for PCB