ER-Series rack enclosure • “Easy Rack” concept

A 12U ER-Series rack that belongs in the living room.

The ER-Series rack enclosure is a furniture-grade, 12U micro data-center cabinet built around an “Easy Rack” idea: modular 2×4 panels that assemble like building blocks, with threaded inserts for repeatable, lab-friendly construction.

Instead of exposed steel rails and datacenter noise, the ER-Series enclosure looks like a compact wooden cabinet. Inside, it still behaves like a serious lab rack: it carries Raspberry Pi full nodes, miners, routers, and sensors—the actual nodes on the LAN—with airflow, cable routing, and power distribution designed from the start.

What the ER-Series rack enclosure is

At its core, the ER-Series is a 12U vertical frame wrapped in a warm, living-room friendly shell. The enclosure is tuned for small offices, studios, and labs where equipment needs to be both accessible and presentable.

12U interior height for Pi clusters, miners, routers, and power modules.
Furniture-grade exterior panels designed to sit in a living room or office instead of a server closet.
Cable-guided channels and airflow-aware layout to keep wiring controlled and thermals manageable.
Shelves, rails, and mounting points sized for Raspberry Pi 5 systems, compact miners, and lab-grade instrumentation.

The enclosure doesn’t define the network—your Raspberry Pi full nodes, miners, and sensors do. The ER-Series simply gives those nodes a practical, documented place to live.

“Easy Rack” panels: a 2×4 building-block system

The ER-Series enclosure is built from a family of 2×4 panels. Each panel shares the same outer footprint but serves a different purpose: solid walls, vented panels, doors, equipment mounts, or cable pass-throughs. Threaded inserts in the wood let panels be swapped, upgraded, or re-used without wearing out the material.

Standardized 2×4 panel geometry for sides, top, bottom, back, and doors.
Threaded inserts for repeatable assembly and disassembly with simple hand tools.
Swappable panel types: solid, vented, windowed, and utility panels for power and cable entry.
Layout designed so educators and lab staff can reconfigure without woodworking skills or special jigs.

Think of the ER-Series shell as a set of compatible building blocks: start with a basic enclosure, then adjust panels as the lab’s needs evolve.

Built for educators and lab teams

The panel system is intentionally tuned for environments where the people building the rack are not carpenters. An instructor, lab tech, or advanced student should be able to assemble and maintain the enclosure with nothing more than basic tools.

Flat-pack friendly design for easier shipping and storage before assembly.
Clear fastener patterns: every panel uses consistent bolt locations and threaded inserts.
Replaceable panels so damaged parts or experimental cutouts can be swapped without discarding the rack.
Documentation aligned with classroom use: step-by-step assembly, callouts for safety and cable management, and space for labels.

For a grant-funded pilot, multiple ER-Series enclosures can be shipped as kits, assembled on-site by faculty and students, and kept in service by swapping panels instead of replacing the cabinet.

Inside the rack: aggregation and generation nodes on the LAN

Inside the ER-Series enclosure, the active work is done by the devices on the LAN—the nodes themselves. These include:

Raspberry Pi 5 full nodes providing Bitcoin and service infrastructure.
ASIC miners and low-power teaching miners acting as generation nodes.
Routers, switches, and access points handling aggregation, failover, and VLANs.
Sensors and metering modules collecting power, thermal, and environmental data.

The ER-Series enclosure is the physical stage. The nodes on the LAN—full nodes, miners, routers, and sensors—are the actors. Together they form the testbed showcased on the home and grants pages.

Roadmap for the ER-Series family

The 12U ER-Series enclosure is the first member of a planned family of racks that share the same “Easy Rack” panel system. Smaller and larger variants, as well as dedicated teaching shells, can all reuse the same panel language and documentation so that labs don’t have to relearn the hardware each time.

As the prototype lab matures, additional materials—cut lists, drawings, assembly notes, and curriculum tie-ins—will be published alongside the technical documentation suite and made available to grant partners.

See how the ER-Series rack fits into grants, STEM programs, and outreach »