Piunora is an open source Raspberry Pi CM4 carrier board. It is designed and manufactured by Diodes Delight, Germany.
Piunora is a compact, easy-to-use CM4 carrier board for electronics prototyping with embedded Linux. It has a familiar form factor, legible pin labels (Top side of the board).
A compact design helps use in the application where space is a constraint so it can also be used in product as a whole if the interfaces provided are sufficient for the application.
Piunora CM4 carrier board makes it a useful SBC along with Raspberry Pi CM4. Software-wise it is fully compatible with all the software and frameworks which works on Raspberry Pi CM4 module considering the available hardware interfaces on the board.
Features & Specifications
- Arduino UNO R3 / Adafruit Metro compatible form factor (3.3 V logic, may not be compatible with all Shields)
- 1x HDMI 2.0 port
- 1x USB 2.0 Host or 1x USB Device
- Mode select switch for USB host (USB Type-A) and device mode (USB Type-C) configuration. You don’t need to power cycle the board if you want to change the selection.
- Microchip MCP3008 ADC inputs
- PCI-e through M.2 B-Key connector on the back side of the board with dedicated 3.3 V / 3 A supply
- Qwiic/Stemma QT connector to easily interface with I²C devices, makes it instantly compatible with lots of sensors boards available in the market.
- Camera connector (back side) that supports all Pi-compatible cameras
- A WS2812 Smart RGB LED for user status
- Compatible with all Raspberry CM4 variants
- Compact design: Piunora Lite is 8-12 mm and the Piunora Pro is 11-13 mm in height.
- 2x user-controllable buttons (including software that turns one of them into a safe-shutdown button), other can be used for booting from USB during power up.
- Piunora is open hardware, and they have promised they will publish both design files and software before backers get their boards.
Piunora Pro Vs Piunora Lite
There are two version available for the Piunora, Lite and Pro. Both board have the same PCB but Lite version doesn’t have two connectors soldered on the bottom side for obvious space and cost savings purpose. Piunora Lite doesn’t have the following:
- PCI-e M.2 B-Key Port
- Camera connector
Limitation of Piunora Board?
- They don’t have separate SD card interface. If you are using Raspberry Pi CM4 with eMMC, SD card connector is not used.
- There is no Ethernet.
- Very limited number of exposed IOs
- USB on header or any connector expansion.
May be they can work on Pro Plus version with:
- Ethernet
- SD card(2nd SDIO on other Pins as alternate function)
- Provide all available IOs on a header
- USB interface on a connector for expansion
- USB PD support.
Let’s see how they progress.
Where to buy Piunora CM4 Carrier board?
Piunora CM4 carrier Board was launched on Crowd Supply a couple of months back and now fully funded. Backers will be getting their boards soon.
Piunora Lite costs just 30$ where as Piunora costs slightly higher that is 39$.
Please note you need to buy Raspberry Pi CM4 Module separately, also there are no cables, etc. which comes along with the board.
You can buy one from Crowd Supply now.
I am also building one fully Open Source Custom Carrier board for Raspberry Pi CM4, if you are interested, do leave a comments below and I will share the details. I will be using Altium Designer.