Raspberry Pi Foundation Launches Compute Module 4 for Industrial Users (techcrunch.com) 40
The Raspberry Pi Foundation is launching a new product today -- the Compute Module 4. From a report: If you've been keeping an eye on the Raspberry Pi releases, you know that the flagship Raspberry Pi 4 was released in June 2019. The Compute Module 4 features the same processor, but packed in a compute module for industrial use cases. A traditional Raspberry Pi is a single-board computer with a ton of ports sticking out. Compute Modules are somewhat different. Those system-on-module variants are more compact single-board computers without any traditional port. It lets you create a prototype using a traditional Raspberry Pi, and then order a bunch of Compute Modules to embed in your commercial products. "Over half of the seven million Raspberry Pi units we sell each year go into industrial and commercial applications, from digital signage to thin clients to process automation," Eben Upton wrote on the Raspberry Pi blog. Some things are strictly similar between the Raspberry Pi 4 and the Compute Module 4, such as the 64-bit ARM-based processor with VideoCore VI graphics. This is going to represent a huge upgrade for previous Compute Module customers. In particular, you get much better video performance with 4Kp60 hardware decode for H.265 videos, 1080p60 hardware decode for H.264 videos, 1080p30 hardware encode of H.264 videos. You can also take advantage of the dual HDMI interfaces to connect up to two 4K displays at 60 frames per second.
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Over half of the seven million Raspberry Pi units we sell each year go into industrial and commercial applications
Yikes
I hear you.. Where I figure the Pi is a reasonable platform for a hobby, it's certainly not "commercial grade" equipment. But I would say that it's a whole lot cheaper than the low end commercial stuff out there, so I'm guessing the price is winning the argument in a significant number of cases.
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The scale of the project!
You have the open source community that provides the infrastructure for support, bug reporting, testing, updates, education, communication, translation, etc...
All in the open, for millions of people with the exact same hardware, and a desire to learn from it, and improve it, can interact and share ideas.
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The massive community that's been built around it as a target platform really results in a very stable device.
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The Pi isn't anywhere near what "stable" needs to be in the industrial world. Tell me, how would you sync two Pis up so that they ran in true lockstep, clock to clock, instruction to instruction, in case one processor failed? Where can I get a Pi that has safety-qualified memory, or even just one that's *guaranteed* not to trash the SD card if it suddenly loses power? Because in many situations, that's the kind of stability and capability that's required. The "massive community" doesn't mean anything whe
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Many industrial applications are safety-critical. Control systems for theme park rides, automotive applications, etc. Worked with plenty of them over the last 30 years. :-)
Safety critical (Score:3)
Hopefully you design most of the safety critical stuff away from the computer (that is probably running Windows CE). Like the boiler safety valve. Things that stop things.
Nobody in their right mind would use complex, bug prone computers for any safety critical thing that cannot be easily stopped. Like flying an airplane....
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But you mentioned lock-step operation which is used in applications an order of magnitude up the safety ladder. No regulatory agency would ever approve of using a Pi in that capacity.
Yes, I did, in response to EETech's post talking about how "stable" the Pi was. I'm well aware that lockstep isn't something the Pi is capable of - that was the point of my post.
Re: Jesus Christ (Score:2)
Ok great so it's not suitable for medical uses or on the space shuttle.
Any reason you need that level of redundancy in digital signage, turnstile controllers, lobby music players, and stuff like that?
I'm no industry analyst but I'm pretty sure there are more of those than there are space shuttles.
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Redundancy, no. Reliability, almost certainly, but there are exceptions, hence "Because in many situations" in my post. Just the same, you don't want to be having to dig through countless Internet forums for "community support" while lots of people are unhappy because the subway turnstiles don't work, or they do work, and you're losing thousands of dollars because turns aren't being recorded.
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I hear you.. Where I figure the Pi is a reasonable platform for a hobby, it's certainly not "commercial grade" equipment.
Yeah it is...
But I would say that it's a whole lot cheaper than the low end commercial stuff out there, so I'm guessing the price is winning the argument in a significant number of cases.
That too. The commercial grade stuff was terrible. You had the choice of PC based PC104 which had the advantage of fairly standard development (not for the peripherals though) but was expensive, poorly d
Embed is commercial produces? (Score:2)
Those system-on-module variants are more compact single-board computers without any traditional port. It lets you create a prototype using a traditional Raspberry Pi, and then order a bunch of Compute Modules to embed in your commercial products.
Are manufacturers really embedding wholesale/retail Pi's in products?
Seems to me that this would not be for commercial products, but instead for internal manufacturing needs.
Re:Embed is commercial produces? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yes, it's a thing.. Sadly the development kits for the commercial products are *way* more expensive than a Pi setup.
Personally, I'd not go this route for a commercial product. IF I wanted to do something that worked like the Pi, I'd build my own commercial grade version of it and integrate it into my product that way. You could do the development on the cheap Pi, but deliver on your own custom boards. I guess the Pi Foundation saw that they could make boards just for this, not that they are capable of in
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You can start with the Raspberry Pi to make your proof of concept. Then go with your own board later. Sad to say, we've got a third party creating a custom linux board for something like this and it's extremely slow going; too many cooks getting involved mostly, not enough communication. An industrial version of a lower end compute module would have worked just fine, from my backseat driver perspective.
Useful but not mission critical category (Score:3)
So you connect a pi, possibly with an ADC, and graph these outputs on a cheap monitor. That way the operator can glance at the screen periodically to make sure pressures, temps, etc are where they should be. It can he
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RPi is a bit overkill for a lot of this potentially. You can get lower end compute modules though, with no wifi, bluetooth, video, etc. Don't hook the module up to it, get the data out via ethernet, then you can have 50 modules all sending data to one system (even a Raspberry Pi) that the monitor connects to.
There are also many competitors out there, many of which are more suitable for industrial uses (if you need a higher temperature range). Raspberry Pi did not invent any of this stuff, they're just go
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RPi is a bit overkill for a lot of this potentially. You can get lower end compute modules though, with no wifi, bluetooth, video, etc. Don't hook the module up to it, get the data out via ethernet, then you can have 50 modules all sending data to one system (even a Raspberry Pi) that the monitor connects to.
There are also many competitors out there, many of which are more suitable for industrial uses (if you need a higher temperature range). Raspberry Pi did not invent any of this stuff, they're just good at marketing, they went after the hobbyist and consumer side first which created a buzz in the industrial side.
In the scenario I offered you want the video because the monitor is located with the manufacturing equipment's operator. It is for the operator's use. There also needs to be something at the device to get the data out.
Pi is just a convenience, its a $35 "linux box" that keeps things simpler on the software development side. An off-the-shelf part from the local electronics store.
I have seen and used industrial grade equipment in the past. However these were usually essentials that came with the equipme
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Here's what I use a lot of...
http://comfiletech.com/categor... [comfiletech.com]
Rugged, touchscreen Pi for $200 that runs on 24V and has isolated I/O modules.
Re:Embed is commercial produces? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. They aren't in consumer products (it's easier to custom design for things that are made in the millions), but for devices that are made in the thousands, the Pi offers a reasonably powerful computation device you can attach to a carrier board and be on your way.
If you visit an electronics store, have a close look at the Nintendo Switch display - There is a little screen beside the Nintendo Switches (covered up to avoid excess touching these days), and a big screen to show videos and such. In the past, the little screen was a touch screen that could be used to select and play various game trailers on the big screen. These days, the big screen displays game trailers, while the little screen shows a slide show. But the point is, it's actually a Raspberry Pi inside driving the screens. I think it's got an LCD HAT and the big screen is just a typical HDMI display. (I know this because in the early days, they broke a lot and often hung at the Linux kernel boot screen).
You have to realize what the Pi brings to the table - decent computation power to power a UI, HDMI output for stupidly cheap output options, WiFi, Ethernet for connectivity and USB. All for a module costing $30 or so.
It also costs no money to develop for - you don't have to buy special tools or anything, and set up is quick and user friendly because everyone has done it and the instructions have been refined over the years.
If you took a regular industrial compute board, the tools are sketchy, installation instructions are usually 3 versions out of date because the manufacturer couldn't be bothered updating them, and almost always involve expensive licensing - you spend $500-5000 on a board that needs another $2000 in software purchases to use.
For a lot of industrial purposes, especially UI based ones, the Pi is a significant upgrade to what's available.
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It would be useful for prototyping, but far too expensive for production. The thing is, there are many companies building single board Arm boards much cheaper than a Raspberry Pi. RPi has the marketing though especially to the hobbyists. Now if you just need 100 of the modules, then it's probably cheaper to get the RPi ones than roll your own board, and there are indeed applications for these. For instance, we do a lot of control of other devices with Rasberry Pis for testing, running through a full reg
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I'm few days late to the party, but...
A while back I came across some discarded prototypes from Sony. I eventually determined that they were multi-zone jukebox appliances for running sound systems in store. There were two types: One was a custom PCB using a low-power ARM-based microcontroller and a little bit of RAM in addition to the DAC hardware. The other was much nicer, with more zones (8 output jacks) and a bunch of heavy-duty lighted buttons plugged into sockets on it -- obviously meant to be put into
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Why would an industrial user be interested in HDMI?
For the most part they wouldnt be. I believe the intended market is disjoint from the crap in the summary (and possibly article.)
.. same market is the regular Pi.
This is more for the hobby/home/craft builder market, yes?
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Cripes - just using "ladder logic" alone adds 0s to costs. The ladder logic for common PLCs (Allen Bradley, Omron, Koyo, etc.) is convoluted, with dense technical documentation, expensive programming software, and, for a traditional software programmer, crap for a programming environment and debugging toolset.
Compare that to writing even something Wiring (arduino), or python, or *gasp* even C# via Net Core. Gads easier, and I can even self-host a simple web server to pump out the captured data.
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Includes PCIe! (Score:4, Informative)
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Yeah, it seems like a limitation of the SoC that it only supports USB 2.0 natively and they wanted the consumer edition to boot from USB 3 hard drives. This gives people the option of, hopefully, booting from NVMe.
Which makes me wonder why the compute module isn't the default form factor.* In this release they've broken with tradition and developed a new connector. Assuming they keep that for several generations, one could buy an IO board and just upgrade the CM daughter card.
(*Yes it's an education product
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Not backwards-compatible (Score:3)
Hmm.. The summary omitted that the new module comes in a new form-factor, with a different connector.
So, you can't replace older slower Compute Module with this on existing IO boards/motherboards.
I had been toying with the idea of having a socket for a compute module for running an emulator inside a custom keyboard PCB in a vintage computer enclosure. But should I support the old or the new.. or try to squeeze in support for both?
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I had been toying with the idea of having a socket for a compute module for running an emulator inside a custom keyboard PCB in a vintage computer enclosure. But should I support the old or the new.. or try to squeeze in support for both?
There never ends up being a standard anything for plug-in hardware like this. Spend your clever-time coming up with a socket system that cares as little as possible about the dimensions of the thing that will be socket'd while protecting itself from the forces of clumsy humans and curious cats.