M5Stack Unveils the CardputerZero, an All-In-One Pocket-Sized Gadget Powered by the Raspberry Pi CM0
Raspberry Pi's cheapest computer-on-module finds a home in the first Cardputer not to be powered by an Espressif ESP32 microcontroller.
M5Stack has announced an impending refresh to its popular Cardputer all-in-one development board family — and this time it's dropping the microcontroller in favor of being powered by the Raspberry Pi Compute Module Zero (CM0).
"M5 CardputerZero [is] your pocket Linux lab for coding, hacking, and creating," the company promises of the first Raspberry Pi-powered entry in the Cardputer range. "From CLI [Command-Line Interface] and SSH [Secure SHell] access to on-device AI [Artificial Intelligence], it brings real Linux capability wherever you go. Upload your own projects or explore apps and community firmware in the built-in store. Switch instantly on-device — no PC, no reflashing."
Previous entries in the Cardputer range — the Cardputer and CardputerAdv — have been built around Espressif ESP32 microcontrollers, and have proven a popular choice for those looking for low-power embedded devices with on-board displays, keyboards, and an internal battery. The new CardputerZero, though, considerably ups the performance stakes by switching out to the Raspberry Pi Compute Module Zero, a Chinese-market-exclusive cost-reduced computer-on-module built around the Broadcom BCM2837 system-on-chip.
The Raspberry Pi Compute Module Zero inside the CardputerZero includes four Arm Cortex-A53 cores running at up to 1GHz, a VideoCore-IV graphics processor running at up to 400MHz, on-board hardware codec for H.264 encoding at up to 1080p30 and H.264/MP4 decoding at the same resolution, and 512MB of RAM. To this, M5Stack has added a 1.9" LCD with HDMI output, an optional Sony IMX219 eight-megapixel camera, the Cardputer's iconic compact 46-key keyboard, microphone and 1W speaker plus TRS jack for analog audio output, and an integrated 1,500mAh battery.
Elsewhere in the compact housing is an optional Bosch Sensortec BMI270 inertial measurement unit (IMU) sensor, an Epson Crystal Device RX8130CE real-time clock (RTC), two USB Type-C and one USB Type-A port switchable between host and device modes, a wired Fast Ethernet port, single-band 2.4GHz 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2 with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), a microSD Card slot for storage, and a Grove port switchable between I2C and UART plus a 0.1" 14-pin expansion header with SPI, I2C, UART, and USB buses, a 5V power supply, and general-purpose input/output (GPIO) capabilities.
The company has confirmed two variants of the gadget to be available at launch: the CardputerZero includes all the above plus a bundled 32GB microSD Card, while the lower-cost CardputerZero Lite drops the camera, IMU and microSD Card to shave $50 off the price. Interested parties can register for "super early bird" pricing on the M5Stack store for $1, ahead of a planned mid-May Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign launch, to pre-order the CardputerZero Lite at $59 instead of its planned $99 retail price or the CardputerZero at $89 instead of $149.