Piunora, an open-source carrier board, is based on Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4. Crowd Supply funded this board on 11th May 2021 with the goal of $15000. Further, this easy-to-use development board works well for electronics prototyping with Linux. Moreover, the familiar form factor and the M.2 B key slots make Piunora capable of running NVMe storage modules.
The developer Timonsku is now branding the board under Diodes Delight. Moreover, there are two versions of board Piunora Pro and Piunora Lite. Diodes Delight has launched these boards for 39$ and 30$. Besides, they plan to ship them by 28th June 2021.
Piunora and Peripherals
“Piunora is a tiny version of Raspberry Pi 4 single-board computer (SBC) with added flexibility to accommodate custom form factors.” Piunora has Arduino UNO R3 and Adafruit Metro compatible form factor with 3.3V logic. Also, the board has an expansion interface that supports most of the Arduino shields. Furthermore, the board has an M.2B key connector on the rear of the board with a 3.3V/3A supply. This M.2 B-key port can be used for SSD storage and as a host for a diverse range of PCI-e expansion boards. Thus, this small-sized board (70mm x 53mm x 8 to 13 mm) is handy for rapid prototyping and embedded M2 applications.
Piunora Raspberry Pi 4 carrier board is entirely compatible with software written for Raspberry Pi. This makes Piunora easy to use. Moreover, it has Qwicc/Stemma QT compatible connectors. These connectors make interfacing with I2C sensors from Adafruit and Sparkfun easy. Thus, connecting Piunora to high-end sensors and peripherals requires no soldering. Besides, Python is used to conduct this quick interfacing.
Additional Features on Piunora
Apart from Qwicc/Stemma and M.2 B-key connectors, Piunora has onboard ADC MCP 30008. This low cost, eight-channel, 10 bit ADC provides the analog inputs. “Six ADC channels are exposed to a pin header, and two additional channels are broken out to solder pads on the board for extra analog.” Also, there are two user buttons and a WS2812 smart RGB LED for user status on the board.
The Piunora Raspberry Pi 4 carrier board has a full-sized HDMI 2.0 port. In addition, there is a USB port that can be used for both power supply or transferring USB 2.0 data. This port is capable of interfacing with 900mA or higher using ports. The USB port can be switched between USB host (USB type-A) and device mode (USB type-C). Moreover, Piunora has a full-sized camera connector that supports all Pi-compatible cameras. Besides, the slim designed Piunora has three additional GPIO’s connected from CM4.
Compute Module 4
In October 2020, Compute Module 4 was launched. CM4 is based on BCM2711 SoC. The BCM2711 SoC is made of four 1.5GHz Cortex A72 cores. Further, there are a PWM fan controller and 4-pin fan connectors on the module. The board also includes 2 to 8GB LPDDR4-3200 RAM and 0 to 32 GB eMMC. Besides, there is a possibility of optional Wi-fi or Bluetooth available.
So, one can buy this Raspberry Pi 4 carrier board Piunora from the Crowds Supply product site. An optional boot card that costs $10 can be bought along with Piunora Pro and Piunora Lite. Also, the recommended SSD is SN520 from Western Digital and SanDisk. However, an NVME 2242/2230 B+M Key SSD would work. One can visit the Piunora Crowds Supply site for more information. The source for pictures and technical specifications is the official product page.
Sanskriti Sawant is a student of Electronics and Telecommunication engineering. She is passionate about Computer architecture, VLSI and plans to major in them. She is working on HDL languages and FPGA’s.
