A Raspberry Pi
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The 55x40 mm Compute Module 4 (CM4), shown above left, provides the power of a Raspberry Pi4 in a compact form factor especially developed for embedded industrial applications and comes in 32 variants of RAM, eMMC Flash, and with/without wireless connectivity.
The CM4 is designed to connect to a system board, that would typically be specifically developed for the intended application, via two 100-pin high density connectors. However, to assist the development of products that use the CM4, a generic CM4 IO Board, powered by either 5VDC or 12VDC, is available (more detail here) that exposes all the IO normally available from a Pi 4 as well as providing a PCIe socket, a RTC with a battery socket that can ‘wake up’ the CM4, two MIPI CSI-2 camera FPC connectors, and two MIPI DSI display FPC connectors.
Shown above right is a development and testing build that uses a wireless CM4 with 2GB RAM and 32GB eMMC, attached to a development IO Board, and all housed in a Waveshare metal enclosure which also provides the option of fitting an external antenna.
This build with no moving parts (except for the cooling fan) therefore provides an exceptionally robust platform, but it should be noted that the CM4 update to a CM5 may happen some time in 2024, and it may or may not have the same form factor.
The annotated images below show a series of steps that illustrate this CM4 build which has initially been used for an IoT time lapse photography project - details here.
An update to this build has subsequently been carried out to install a 1TB NVMe SSD and a second series of images are shown for this addition after the initial set below
| CM4 on the IO board in the Waveshare metal case |
cooling fan fitted to the inside of the top of the case | GPIO adaptor that brings the connections to the case side is anchored to stop it tilting |
all the main CM4 connectors are on the front side of the metal case |
| external antenna's internal wiring connects directly to the CM4 |
external antenna screws onto the fitting on the back side of the case | Camera attached (ribbon cable the same as for a PiZero) |
cam0 ribbon connection on the CM4 |
The second series of images below show how a 1TB NVMe SSD has been added to the build, which necessitated the development of a new custom 3D printed lid for the Waveshare metal enclosure, since the height of the SSD and its adaptor inserted into the IO Board meant that the original lid could no longer be used.
More details of the 3D print design is given in this web page that documents several different custom case designs.
| 1TB Crucial P3 Plus NVMe SSD | PCI-E to M.2 adapter inserted into the IO Board | top down view of the updated IO Board |
| NVMe SSD on its adapter inserted into the IO Board |
new custom 3D printed lid with the cooling fan attached |
new overall assembly with the new custom 3D printed lid |
IoT hardware platform build details:
More about IoT:
All the currently available maker project information: