Top and Side view of Panda Board/ daughter card 10 stack
I dummied up a cluster of Texas Instruments Panda boards and a daughter card that will control secure booting. I wanted to test the size and make sure it would fit into the 19″ rack case I’m having built. Because Panda boards are back ordered I ordered some blank circuit board stock and cut it to the sizes I needed to build the stack. I managed to get my hands on two dead boards and then cut 8 more Panda board sized blanks. Then I made up 10 daughter card sized blanks and bolted them together.
The stack measures 14.5″ long, which will fit quite nicely in a 17″ wide case with room for cables to be attached and routed to the back of the case. I’ve attached some pictures, you can see the 2 dead Panda boards, 8 blanks and the 10 daughter cards blanks that have the odd shape cut out of them to mount closer to the Panda boards, The cutout allows room for the USB/Ethernet stack and Audio jacks while the rest of the board fits within 1/2 inch of the Panda board for space savings.
It’s fun doing this work but harder then I expected. Getting the cutouts and the holes drilled into the blank boards correctly was some harder then I expected.
Tomorrow drag out an old 19″ rack mount case and test in the case, but given the actual size I’m not worried at all.
