An ornate wooden cigar box with a bluetooth keyboard

For a few years, I ran a bunch of self-hosted sites sites and services from a Raspberry Pi 4B, perched atop my radiator. It was great, and I was generally very happy with it.

A few months ago, a swapped out the Pi in favour of a low-power Intel m3 laptop. Performance improved from an already solid baseline, and I was left with a perfectly good Raspberry Pi, and nothing to do with it.

I toyed with the idea of a numpad driven in-car entertainment system, a hallway magic mirror, and a few other permanent installations, but nothing seemed quite right.

Then two purchasing opportunities appeared.

The first was an ornate wooden cigar box which appeared in the Cash Converters discount bin alongside a bluetooth keyboad that say perfectly atop the lower section.

An ornate wooden cigar lid with a 7-inch display and a bunch of cables

The second was the appearance of some elecrow screens at my local Amazon returns depot.

These arrived within days of each other, and serendipity made it obvious what I should do.

Everything fits inside, and everything works - although I’m going to splash out on an 18650- powered UPS. This will double the cost of the project. I’m also taking some time to think how I can achieve my goal without damaging the box.