Seeed Studio's Dual Gigabit Ethernet Carrier Board Aims at Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 Routers
With two USB 3.0 ports, two gigabit Ethernet ports, video capabilities, and more, Seeed's compact carrier is impressively featured.
Seeed Studio has announced the launch of a carrier board for the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4, offering two gigabit Ethernet ports — making it ideal for network appliance projects like gateways and routers.
"The Dual Gigabit Ethernet Carrier Board for the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 was designed with soft router applications in mind," the company explains of its latest product, "featuring dual Gigabit Ethernet ports and dual USB 3.0 ports."
"In addition, it also features a rich set of I/O peripherals such as MIPI CSI, MIPI DSI and micro-HDMI for display and camera connectivity, a standard 9-pin USB 3.0 for further USB expansion, microSD card slot and FPC connector. Despite this, the Dual Gigabit Ethernet Carrier Board maintains a small form factor of 75 by 64 by 21mm [around 2.95 x 2.52 x 0.82in] – that’s one third the size of the official I/O Board!"
As it includes a microSD slot, the compact carrier board supports the full range of Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 boards — including the Compute Module 4 Lite family, which lack on-board eMMC storage common to the main Compute Module 4 range. Depending on model of Compute Module 4 chosen, then, the carrier board can support up to 8GB of LPDDR4 RAM and 32GB of eMMC storage, connected to the quad-core Arm Cortex-A72 BCM2711C0.
One thing the Dual Gigabit Ethernet Carrier Board doesn't include, however, is access to the PCI Express lane offered on the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4; this is instead used to drive the dual Gigabit port. Additional network connectivity, meanwhile, is provided by Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on board selected Compute Module 4 boards.
The carrier board is up for pre-order on Seeed Studio now, priced at $45 before volume discounts and with delivery expected to begin in mid-April this year.