So after a lot of inactivity with some sporadic instances of occasional activity, I have come to the following design decisions and scope changes.

I've reimagined the this build as a Self Contained Field Ready Compute Resource & Ground Station. Since the focus has slightly shifted, the features have as well. Some of those tweaks include:

1. Integrated Faraday cage descoped - my approach for addressing this scope item was just too difficult to execute effectively and affects the rest of the build. I have found some great faraday cage solutions and have resolved to build a separate purpose built faraday storage container which will store this and other sensitive devices offloading that requirement from the deck to a separate support element.
2. Larger Plastic Hard Case - I decided to go with a larger Olympia case I found cheap, new outer dimensions are L10.47”xW9.68”xH6.87”
3. Battery Pack . I had a rarely used 294Wh Solar generator (power pack) for camping which has a BMS, In/out ports and controller with a Lithium battery.  I am going to repurpose that hardware and battery for this build.
4. My primary screen is now a 10.5 In Touch Screen, up from the previous 7In
5. I have decided on a more modularized approach opting for more internal storage to House a Flipper Zero, M5 Stack Cardputer and a Finrisi Component identifier/tester/Oscilloscope/Function Generator as stand alone test gear as a starting point. Storage will also hold antennas, adapters, cables and other items TBD.
6. I have added an analog FPV RF Video Receiver to the RF feature set
7. The ethernet port shall be placed on the front panel primarily to allow for offline LLM Coprocessing with a helper x86 machine but also for wired connectivity when needed/available
8. The GPIO will be exposed on the front panel and HATS in the internal storage to be swapped out as needed, this minimizes the potential for simultaneous HAT collisions
   1. Sense HAT
   2. GPIO Breakout with status LEDs
   3. Adafruit Crickit Robotics interface
9. SD Card Slot will be extended from the internal housed Raspberry Pi and surfaced on the front panel providing persistent SD card access. This will allow for quick, on the fly swap out/replacement of the OS SD depending on the need
10. Internal physical storage for multiple pre-configured SD's (and copies) with loadouts supporting both operational diversity and recovery/redundancy.
    1. Software Dev loadout (Debian)
    2. Drone Ground Station loadout (iNav)
    3. Robotics & Prototyping Loadout
    4. RF Bench Loadout (SDR, ADS)
    5. Offline/Survival Loadout (Kiwix)
    6. Entertainment Loadout (RetroPie)
    7. Offline LLM Loadout

I'll update the log with my updated (target) feature list in a few days and start to update the panel layouts next week. I'm also thinking about supporting a second screen either as a peripheral or integrated into the case since the Pi4 has native multi screen.

See you soon!