bob prohaska <bp@www.zefox.net> wrote:

Anybody got an idea what's going on? At this point
a Pi4 kit is vast overkill for the job but looks
like the most available option. I'm using FreeBSD
to run BIND9 for an authoritative nameserver. No
display or keyboard, just storage, wired ethernet
and serial console.

Just the other day, I scored a Compute Module 4 when pishop.us got a few hundred of them in. Price is about the same as a comparable Raspberry Pi 4, they're available with onboard eMMC storage (no SD card needed), and there's
a wide variety of carrier boards that bring out whatever I/O is needed.
Mine will be set up with a minimal carrier with power and UART pins
populated on the GPIO header to run OctoPrint. I've had another one running OctoPrint on another printer for a few months, and it's worked like a champ. The new one will replace a RPi Zero 2 W, which is noticeably
slower...thinking of turning that into a dedicated serial terminal.

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scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us wrote:

bob prohaska <bp@www.zefox.net> wrote:

Anybody got an idea what's going on? At this point
a Pi4 kit is vast overkill for the job but looks
like the most available option. I'm using FreeBSD
to run BIND9 for an authoritative nameserver. No
display or keyboard, just storage, wired ethernet
and serial console.

Just the other day, I scored a Compute Module 4 when pishop.us got a few hundred of them in. Price is about the same as a comparable Raspberry Pi 4, they're available with onboard eMMC storage (no SD card needed), and there's a wide variety of carrier boards that bring out whatever I/O is needed.

Just how much extra hardware is required to make a CM4 a stand-alone host?
I'll need some sort of enclosure, too.

Another option is to get a Pi400 and use it to free up a Pi4B for other
uses. Overkill, again, but readily available.

Thanks for writing!

bob prohaska

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bob prohaska <bp@www.zefox.net> wrote:

scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us wrote:

Just the other day, I scored a Compute Module 4 when pishop.us got a few
hundred of them in. Price is about the same as a comparable Raspberry Pi 4, >> they're available with onboard eMMC storage (no SD card needed), and there's >> a wide variety of carrier boards that bring out whatever I/O is needed.

Just how much extra hardware is required to make a CM4 a stand-alone host?

It depends on what you want to do. The official I/O board brings out lots
of extra I/O, including things like PCI Express that aren't available from
the RPi 4 without hacking it, but is a fair bit larger. At the other
extreme are boards barely large enough for a GPIO header and one of those 100-pin connectors the CM4 uses. There are even some that adapt the CM4
into the normal Raspberry Pi form factor, making it somewhat of a drop-in replacement. There are also other companies adopting the CM4 form factor to roll out boards with other SOCs that can use the same ecosystem of add-ons.

For my 3D printer OctoPrint hosts, I'm using the Waveshare Nano Base Board
A:

https://www.pishop.us/product/nano-base-board-a-for-raspberry-pi-compute-module-4/

It breaks out a USB 2.0 port, MicroSD slot (not used if the CM4 has eMMC), camera, and GPIO, and uses USB-C for power. Of those, I only need four GPIO pins (power and UART) to connect to a printer running Marlin. This board is the same size as the CM4.

I also have a router built around a CM4, running OpenWRT. That one uses the DFRobot IoT Router Carrier Board Mini:

https://www.dfrobot.com/product-2242.html

It provides two Gigabit Ethernet ports (one built-in to the SOC, one as an add-on over PCI Express), a MicroSD slot, a 26-pin GPIO header, and two
USB-C ports (one for power, one (2.0) for data). This board is a little bit larger, but the total system size still easily fits in your hand.

Neither of these include HDMI because I don't need it for the intended applications.

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scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us wrote:

bob prohaska <bp@www.zefox.net> wrote:

Just how much extra hardware is required to make a CM4 a stand-alone host?

It depends on what you want to do. The official I/O board brings out lots
of extra I/O, including things like PCI Express that aren't available from the RPi 4 without hacking it, but is a fair bit larger. At the other
extreme are boards barely large enough for a GPIO header and one of those 100-pin connectors the CM4 uses. There are even some that adapt the CM4
into the normal Raspberry Pi form factor, making it somewhat of a drop-in replacement. There are also other companies adopting the CM4 form factor to roll out boards with other SOCs that can use the same ecosystem of add-ons.

I'd probably want all but HDMI. From the pricing it appears that a CM4 + I/O combo will cost somewhat more than a standard Pi4, other things being equal. Some sort of enclosure would also be helpful, but I didn't see any in a
cursory search.

For the moment I'll wait and hope the supply situation improves.

Thanks for the heads-up!

bob prohaska

For my 3D printer OctoPrint hosts, I'm using the Waveshare Nano Base Board
A:

https://www.pishop.us/product/nano-base-board-a-for-raspberry-pi-compute-module-4/

It breaks out a USB 2.0 port, MicroSD slot (not used if the CM4 has eMMC), camera, and GPIO, and uses USB-C for power. Of those, I only need four GPIO pins (power and UART) to connect to a printer running Marlin. This board is the same size as the CM4.

I also have a router built around a CM4, running OpenWRT. That one uses the DFRobot IoT Router Carrier Board Mini:

https://www.dfrobot.com/product-2242.html

It provides two Gigabit Ethernet ports (one built-in to the SOC, one as an add-on over PCI Express), a MicroSD slot, a 26-pin GPIO header, and two
USB-C ports (one for power, one (2.0) for data). This board is a little bit larger, but the total system size still easily fits in your hand.

Neither of these include HDMI because I don't need it for the intended applications.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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bob prohaska <bp@www.zefox.net> wrote:

I'd probably want all but HDMI. From the pricing it appears that a CM4 + I/O combo will cost somewhat more than a standard Pi4, other things being equal.

True. OTOH, the CM4s have been somewhat more available lately, so it comes down to how long you want to wait.

Some sort of enclosure would also be helpful, but I didn't see any in a cursory search.

There's a laser-cut acrylic enclosure for the router I'm using. Beyond
that, I have a couple of 3D printers and can roll my own cases in any configuration needed. :)

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On Monday, October 17, 2022 at 9:03:43 a.m. UTC-4, Theo wrote:

While it's technically still in production, the only people who want it are industrial folks who have some dependency on the particular Pi2 shape or the A7.

It has a small but dedicated following amongst national security contractors. It's a multi-core computer that is guaranteed to have no wifi. When I worked for a reseller, we got calls for them surprisingly often.

Technically, you can still get every 40-pin GPIO Raspberry Pi. The same reseller had an integrator who wanted roughly 1,000 B+ (single core ones) per year. We could get them, eventually.

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