Zeus 8 case

[zwiller]

Zeus is battery box, is the Zeus 8 CG500 or CG1000? 

[tbone321]

It would be whatever you want to fit it into.

[arw01]

What is the consensus for the first best case for these boards and their bigger brother? I  would like a case that is not a whole lot bigger than the board with the pigtail wires.

[jnealand]

I would think a battery box is still the simplest, easiest solution and it contains both the board and the power supply.  It is readily available and inexpensive.

[arw01]

Yeah, that's a big box though, I'm wanting some options on smaller enclosures, there are places where I don't want a great big battery box.  And I am also concerned the battery boxes are not wind driven snow proof.

Alan

[drlucas]

My walmart has two different size boxes. The small one fits an active hub quite nicely with about 2" of space all around to route power supply cables and cat5 without any issues.

As for weather proof - my boxes were outside in all sorts of bad weather and these stayed dry. They are vented so on the warmer days in October when I was testing for the Halloween show they didn't over heat (ok warm days are like 70for us in October) and during the ice storm and single digit temps there was no issue. There is on the one model a tiny slot on the top and I had to put some silicon in the slots to make sure no water got in but after that I put the strap on the lid and things just worked. With the battery box I also built a tiny shelf inside made of that ceiling vent material (plastic 1x1inch squares and was able to stick the psu at the bottom and board on the top.

All worked nicely for me but I can appreciate wanting a tighter fit and a case with the proper mounting feet like a cg1500 offers.


Anywho - see the pictures of what I've done and maybe it will inspire you



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[twooly]

Besides the size of the battery box the one other thing I disliked was in the cold areas like myself the cat5 cables get harder to move around/get the lid back on.  Ideal solution would be having cables on the board itself out the bottom like the express instead of top but thats a different discussion.

[arw01]

+1 on that, and I think it's very valid in this discussion about them.  I don't have a CG-500 to see how it fits with the cat 5 cables etc, but I feel your pain with the stiffness of the cables in the cold, they were a pain to corral when I had to get it open, and those little side clips were really difficult to pop out in the cold without a lot of fiddling.

I will likely use 4 core connectors as those I have on hand, and they simplify power injection should I need it sometime.