Small but mighty! 10 new Raspberry Pi CM4 Boards

when i built the world's fastest raspberry pi nas i said what i really wanted was native sata 2.5 gigabit ethernet and integrated power in one cm4 board and wouldn't you know radza just sent me this in the mail and it's got all that plus a bonus fifth sata slot a slot for an nvme drive and not one but two ethernet ports you could throw more than 40 terabytes of storage on a raspberry pi but i'm getting ahead of myself i'm going to do a full video on this board soon so subscribe on the topic of storage though maybe you haven't seen 45 drives stornator jr remember that insane enterprise storage array i built in my 16 drives one pie video well josh from 45 drives turned that into a sexy little mini storinator and he even got zfs compiled on the thing go check out their video for more details no word yet on whether it'll turn into a real product but i know i'd love one for today i have a bunch of other compute module 4 boards to talk about like the smallest i o board yet the min cab by uptime lab who also made the pi blade servers i featured in an earlier video i'm also going to talk about home assistant's new amber the re-terminal and a whole lot more but before that let's talk compute modules specifically getting one eben upton founder of raspberry pi recently gave an interview to the register in that interview he mentioned 650 000 raspberry pi's were shipped in july and earlier in the year 800 000 a month that's record demand for these computers and the demand is far outstripping supply he said and i quote what's stopping us is basically everything everything is on fire it's unlikely to end until 2023 of the 650 000 units shipped in july 100 000 of them were compute modules and the pico is also backordered to the tune of 600 000 units and if you ask anyone and i mean anyone about building computer hardware this year you'll get the same answer unless you're one of the top manufacturers with billions of dollars to spend and have existing long-term contracts there are certain chips and components you just can't get network chips cpus usb controllers hardware is just not available it's to the point some people are taking used gear and desoldering chips since there's literally no other way to get them so to see any of these cm4 projects even in the prototype stage is a bit of a miracle and it's not that i love showing things that aren't on the market on this channel it's just that many projects just can't be made until things cool off and it's unfortunate but some things can be made and i'll talk about those now the first one is the min cab this is by far the tiniest cm4 carrier board i've held there's actually one board that's even smaller called the stick but the thing you might be wondering is who the heck needs one of these and how is it so small well the answer to the second question is easier the compute module 4 has 200 pin board to board connectors on the bottom one side has the low speed connections like power and gpio and the other has high speed like ethernet hdmi and pci express to boot up an emmc version of the compute module all you need to do is supply it power and you can still get access to some gpio pins if you want and that's what tiny boards like the min cab do it takes usbc power provides it to the pi then breaks out a few io pins so you can still interact with hardware at least minimally using spi or i squared c or just digital control who's it for well that's a harder question to answer the min cap doesn't have an hdmi port or usb plug so the only real use case is to power up a cm4 for headless usage over wi-fi or bluetooth and there are some people who just need to power up a pi and can do everything they need to do over wi-fi and having some gpio pins available is also convenient for super simple projects but i don't think people be knocking down the doors at micro center trying to buy a min cab something that has a lot more utility though is home assistant's new amber the amber is powered by a compute module 4 and incorporates zigbee an m.2 slot rtc and optionally power over ethernet to make the ideal home assistant setup it's currently on crowd supply and the basic version costs 150 bucks and includes a compute module 4. i haven't started using home assistant yet but with the number of projects i'm starting to incorporate for power and environment monitoring and the fact that i use some philips hue bulbs in my house i'm thinking about testing it out soon let me know if you'd like me to do some videos on home assistant on the pi in the comments on the theme of utility there's another cm4 based product i received a couple weeks ago and i've been testing it quite a bit most recently in my ai powered blower video it's the re-terminal from seed studios this all-in-one is meant for building custom hmi or human machine interfaces think factories or warehouses where you have a process happening and you need a screen to display information like gauge readings and graphs and also some buttons to control the process the read terminal comes with a demo app to show off some of the built-in sensors like a light sensor a 3-axis accelerometer and touch panel and there's already a huge library of guides for building your own custom interfaces on seed studios wiki the re-terminal has all of its regular i o on the left side including usb-c power input micro hdmi gigabit ethernet and usb 2. then on the left there's a 40-pin gpio header the bottom has a standard tripod screw for easy mounting and the back has a giant heat sink to dissipate heat so the pi processor stays cool the back also has a hole for a camera ribbon cable if you want to attach a pi camera and there's a high speed expansion interface hidden underneath a rubber cover that interface uses a custom connector to supply pci express and other high-speed i o to planned expansion modules like 5g wireless an ethernet switch or industrial io none of those modules exist yet but hopefully they will soon there are a number of other handy features on the re-terminal that i won't get into in this video but i think it's really cool to see a complete industrial hmi products built around the raspberry pi for under 200 bucks the main downside i see is the screen is a little less vibrant than i'd like but touch accuracy was great out of the box i think the first expansion module i'd like to see is a battery pack so you could use this thing completely wireless there are a lot more projects i'm tracking currently and you can browse the whole list on my cm4 board database but here are a few more you might like the chipsy aio cm4156 is an oddly named all-in-one raspberry pi computer complete with nvme storage 3 and a touchscreen the cost is a bit steep for the specs but it's the first imac-like raspberry pi i've seen on the market using the compute module 4 for a slim form factor the cm4 tv stick is a pi hdmi stick that plugs directly into a tv or monitor like a chromecast or fire tv stick it'd be great for kodi or retropie and i could imagine popping one in a tv in a hotel room when i'm traveling someday maybe in a few more years but no matter if you're stuck inside or just about anywhere you could pull out the zega main gear 2 and play some funneled games it's a cm4 powered game gear replacement board from z arcade and it looks like a lot of fun but what if fun isn't in your vocabulary and you're all about using pies for serious business well there are some new industrial boards you might like too the edotech cm4 has a metal enclosure and a ton of built-in industrial i o two ethernet ports and a pcie slot for a cellular modem revolution pi is working on a revpi 4 a new version of their popular din rail industrial pc with a compute module 4 at its heart and it looks like it'll fit right into their ecosystem lincoln bins is working on the cm4 box pro which is an industrial carrier board with options for surface mount din rails rack or even vesa mount and finally tech base is working on their modbury class berry and ai gateway din rail pies i like the idea of an out-of-the-box pie cluster though i imagine it's a bit more expensive than building one on your own these are just a few but there are a lot of compute module 4 boards coming out and i couldn't be happier to see the creativity people have with this modular raspberry pi like i said earlier i'm planning on a full video on radsa's nas board i'm also hoping to get an overboard the first raspberry pi in itx form factor and a cutie pie a truly portable pi tablet soon so make sure you subscribe to be the first to find out when i review them until next time i'm jeff gearling

Channel: Jeff Geerling

Views: 163,001

Keywords: raspberry pi, industrial, carrier, iot, internet of things, board, project, uptime lab, mincab, reterminal, seeed studios, home assistant, amber, nas, radxa, taco, penta, sata, poe, ethernet, storinator, jr, 45drives, junior, enterprise, storage, omv, eben upton, register, shortage, chip, computer, building, diy, stick, tv, hue, tablet, cutiepi, chipsee, aio, cm4, compute module, zega, mame gear, sega, game gear, edatec, revolutionpi, revpi4, lincoln binns, box, pro, modberry, techbase, clusberry, ai gateway, din, over board

Id: iN7kiN9Cgxs

Length: 8min 45sec (525 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 06 2021