EDATEC Brings Raspberry Pi's China-Exclusive Compute Module Zero to the West on the ED-CM0NANO SBC
Pseudo-single-board computer, targeting industrial use, is powered by the hard-to-find $18 CM0 — soldered firmly into place.
Embedded and industrial electronics specialist EDA Technology (EDATEC) has become the first company to make the Raspberry Pi Compute Module Zero (CM0) available outside China — as the driving force behind its new ED-CM0NANO pseudo-single-board computer.
"ED-CM0NANO [is the first] industrial Raspberry Pi CM0 SBC, [offering] balanced performance, I/O [Input/Output], and cost," EDATEC writes about its latest launch. "Powered by [the] Raspberry Pi CM0, balanced of cost, performance, and power consumption. Rich I/O with 1× [10/100] Ethernet, 1× HDMI, 2× USB 2.0, and DSI/CSI [MIPI Display Serial Interface/Camera Serial Interface]. Industrially enhanced with integrate[d] RTC [Real-Time Clock] and watchdog. Rapid prototyping with Raspberry Pi 40-pin GPIO [General-Purpose Input/Output header], fully compatible with [the] Raspberry Pi HAT ecosystem. Ready-to-use Raspberry Pi OS, sharing the same Raspberry Pi ecosystem."
It's unusual to see a third-party single-board computer offering full Raspberry Pi compatibility, but there's a trick here: the ED-CM0NANO isn't a true single board computer, but rather a carrier board for Raspberry Pi's Compute Module Zero — an unusual surface-mount solder-down stamp-style variant of the Compute Module family that was launched for just $18 as a Chinese-market exclusive back in September last year.
Unlike the company's current-generation and considerably-more-expensive Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 (CM5) family, the CM0 is based on the same system-on-chip as the older Raspberry Pi 3 single-board computer range — meaning a quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor running at up to 1GHz, a Broadcom Videocore-IV graphics processor, and hardware codecs for H.264/MP4 decoding and H.264 encoding at 1080p30. Elsewhere on the board is 512MB of LPDDR2 memory and optional 8GB or 16GB eMMC storage, which disables microSD card compatibility if added.
While the CM0 is only sold in China, EDATEC's ED-CM0NANO is being sold internationally — though the CM0 is soldered in-place, rather than being easily removable as with other Compute Module models. It's also, as you might expect, more than $18: the board is listed for sale in the US at around $54 without eMMC or $60 with 8GB, reseller-dependent.
More information, including links to buy the board, are available on EDATEC's ED-CM0NANO product page.