DeskPi Super6C mini-ITX board takes up to 6x Raspberry Pi CM4 modules

Mini-ITX cluster board 6x Raspberry Pi CM4

You may remember the Turing Pi 2 mini-ITX cluster board that supports up to four Raspberry Pi CM4 modules. It now has some competition with the DeskPi Super6C board, still based on the mini-ITX form factor, and taking up to six Raspberry Pi CM4 modules. The Super6C offers a much slimmer design since the modules are inserted horizontally instead of vertically, plus each module comes with its own M.2 NVMe SSD socket besides a microSD card slot. The board also features two Gigabit Ethernet ports and two HDMI outputs, as well as four USB 2.0 ports. DeskPi Super6C specifications: SoM – 6x sockets for up Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 Storage 6x M.2 PCIe Gen2 x1 2280 sockets, one per CM4 module 6x MicroSD card slots, one per CM4 module Video Output – 1x HDMI 2.0 output, 1x HDMI 1.4a output, both attached to the first Raspberry Pi CM4 module […]

Femto is a tiny 12x12mm Raspberry Pi RP2040 module

Femto Raspberry Pi RP2040 module

Mirek Folejewski has designed the ridiculously tiny Femto module based on the Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller with a size of just 12x12mm, and still including an SPI flash, a crystal, and a few passive components. We’ve previously covered some really tiny RP2040 boards with the Pimoroni Tiny 2040 and Adafruit QT Py RP2040 boards, as well as the RP2040 Stamp module, but the 12x12mm Femto module is about a quarter of the size of 25x25mm RP2040 Stamp. Femto specifications: MCU – Raspberry Pi RP2040 dual-core Cortex-M0+ microcontroller @ up to 133Mhz with 264kB of SRAM Storage – 4 to 64Mbit QSPI flash I/O – 30 GPIO pins, Reset and BOOTSEL signals, etc… exposed through a frame (See below) Misc – Status LED, 12MHz crystal oscillator, decoupling capacitors Dimensions – 12 x 12mm The board is comprised of two parts: the module itself (aka mainboard) with the Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller […]

Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W board gets Raspberry Pi CM3 adapter

Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W CM3 adapter

A couple of months ago, we wrote about the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3E (CM3E) equipped with the Raspberry Pi RP3A0 SiP found in the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W board. It looks like an OEM product from Raspberry Pi trading, and as such is close to impossible to purchase. But if somehow, you’d like to have the guts of the Pi Zero 2 W into CM3 module form factor, Waveshare has designed the Zero-to-CM3 adapter for the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W that should be compatible with most carrier boards designed for Raspberry Pi CM3 or CM3+. As you can see, it is also using pogo pins to connect to the test points on the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W board in order to route the USB, USB OTG, and SD card signals, so it will not work on older Pi Zero boards since the test points are in […]

Elecrow’s Raspberry Pi Pico Advanced Kit ships with 32 electronics modules, 32 project tutorials

Raspberry Pi Pico Advanced Kit

We’ve just reviewed the Raspberry Pi 4-powered CrowPi L laptop and Crowtail Starter kit used to teach programming and electronics, but Elecrow has now launched the “Raspberry Pi Pico Advanced Kit” with 32 electronics modules, a smart kit car, and 32 tutorials that should be a more affordable way of teaching electronics and programming. However, it does so in a different way, as instead of using visual programming and Python, the Raspberry Pi Pico Advanced Kit’s lessons rely on MicroPython, and the projects are different with for example parts to build an obstacle avoidance, line tracking, or remote controlled car.   Package content: Optional Raspberry Pi Pico board with Raspberry Pi RP2040 dual-core Cortex-M0+ microcontroller Breadboards 2x 400 holes solderless breadboards 1x 170 holes solderless breadboard Display modules 1602 LCD display module (Blue) OLED module 4-bit digital LED display module Lights 10x 5mm LEDs in green, red, blue, yellow, and […]

myBuddy 280 dual arm robot features Raspberry Pi 4 SBC and ESP32 controllers

myBuddy 280 dual arm robot

Elephants Robotics myBuddy 280, aka myBuddy 280 Pi, is a dual-arm collaborative robot for education with a 7-inch display powered by Raspberry Pi 4 SBC, and also features three ESP32-based M5Stack core modules that help with the internal communication between the motors and the Raspberry Pi board. It builds upon the earlier myCobot 280 Pi robot with a single arm, with the same 280mm working range, but the new robot offers two arms, and a total of 13 degrees of freedom (DoF).  The robot is also equipped with two 2MP HD cameras for computer vision, a standard 3.3V expansion I/O interface, a LEGO expansion interface, and can be fitted with a variety of adapters such as suction pumps, grippers, little hands (see below), etc… myBuddy 280 specifications: SBC – Raspberry Pi 4 (2GB or 4GB RAM) single board computer to control the display and communicate with the ESP32 modules IoT […]

CrowPi L Review – Part 2: Learn programming and electronics with a Raspberry Pi 4 laptop

CrowPi L review learn programming electronics

In the first part of our review of CrowPi L Raspberry Pi 4 laptop for education, we checked the hardware and accessories such as the CrowTail starter kit with various sensors and other electronics modules, and showed how to install or remove the Raspberry Pi 4 SBC from the laptop shell. I’ve now had more time to play with the educational software, so I’ll report my experience with the laptop when learning game design and hardware control with Letscode visual programming IDE, as well as the Python lessons for more advanced students. Reinstalling CrowPi OS image It’s the rainy season here in Thailand meaning it’s both hot and humid, and even though I’m not entirely sure it’s related, I recently had to reinstall Raspberry Pi OS on one of my Raspberry Pi with a corrupted SD card. It happened again with the CrowPi L after I left it in its […]

Raspberry Pi 4 gets Vulkan 1.2 conformance, Android Vulkan support

Vulkan deferred shading with shadows

Iglia has done more work on the graphics driver for the VideoCore VI GPU found in Raspberry Pi 4 and other Broadcom BCM2711-based hardware with Vulkan 1.2 conformance, and Roman Stratiienko added Vulkan 3D graphics acceleration to Android, or more exactly LineageOS. Raspberry Pi and Iglia have been collaborating together since the launch of the Raspberry Pi 4 SBC to develop a Khronos conformant Mesa 3D graphics driver for the board, and that’s a long-term project that’s been going on for over two years, and not quite finished yet. Here’s a non-exhaustive timeline of the project so far: February 2020 – Raspberry Pi 4 V3DV driver gets OpenGL ES 3.1 conformance, work on Vulkan starts with the basic triangle demo showcased June 2020 – Vulkan driver source code released with many demos working on Raspberry Pi 4 October 2020 – Iglia gives a project update status presentation for Raspberry Pi […]

52Pi CM4 Router Board also features HDMI, 40-pin Raspberry Pi HAT header, and OLED display

52Pi CM4 Router Board

We’ve already seen compact Raspberry Pi CM4 based router boards with two Ethernet ports from DFRobots, Seeed Studio, and MCUZone. 52Pi CM4 Router Board expands on the same principle but also offers HDMI output, a 40-pin GPIO header for Raspberry Pi HAT expansion boards, and a small OLED information display. The board also includes two Gigabit Ethernet, plus the WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity from the Raspberry Pi CM4, and the extra features make the board larger (146x50mm) than competitors. But that makes the platform that much more flexibly, and can be used as a gateways for all sorts of projects thanks to the wide range of Raspberry Pi HAT available in the market. 52Pi CM4 Router Board (EP-0146) specifications: Compatible with Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 series Storage – MicroSD card slot (only used with Raspberry Pi CM4 Lite) Video Output – HDMI 2.0 port up to 4Kp60 Display – […]

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