8086 Consultancy Launches ClusterCTRL Single USB Gadget Carrier for Raspberry Pi Compute Modules
Smart, low-cost carrier board turns any Raspberry Pi Compute Module into a USB Gadget — complete with support for the ClusterCTRL software.
Nottinghamshire-based 8086 Consultancy has launched a low-cost carrier board for the Raspberry Pi Compute Module family of computers-on-modules (COMs) — including the latest Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3+.
"The ClusterCTRL Single is a low-cost controllable USB Gadget carrier for the Raspberry Pi Compute Module," the company explains of its latest product. "Breaking out 38 (non-power) GPIO so it's also useful where you need more than the 28 (non-power) GPIO pins accessible on the more regular 40 pin Raspberry Pi (A/B/A+/B+/Zero).
"With the ClusterCTRL software on a Raspberry Pi controller (or manual setup on Linux) the Single module can be controlled using the "clusterctrl" command — to power on/off, turn USBBOOT on/off, save defaults etc. Compute modules can be booted from the onboard eMMC (if available) or as a USB device on all models. [It] can be used to write images to Compute Modules with onboard eMMC. Once software has been uploaded to the Compute Modules onboard eMMC it can be used standalone (disable USBBOOT)."
The ClusterCTRL Single isn't 8086 Consultancy's first cluster-oriented design: The more expensive ClusterCTRL Triple is a single board which accepts up to three Raspberry Pi Compute Module COMs, while the Cluster HAT accepts up to four Raspberry Pi Zero, Zero W, Zero H, or Zero WH boards. All are based on operating the clustered devices as a USB Gadget.
The ClusterCTRL is now available from 8086 Consultancy's Tindie store, priced at $15.