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IoT board based on RPi CM4 supports various wireless interfaces and optional PoE

Oct 30, 2022 — by Giorgio Mendoza 911 views

The RAK7391 WisGate Connect is an industrial gateway board powered by the Raspberry Pi Computer Module 4. This product also includes flexible peripherals such as dual GbE ports, camera connectors, and multiple expansion sockets for memory devices.

According to RAKwireless, the WisGate Connect can support the whole Raspberry CM4 family.

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As seen in the block diagram, there are multiple expansion interfaces including three mini PCIe sockets and one M.2 Key-B socket (NVMe drive, SATA or 5G). Two mPCIe interfaces support LoRaWAN and Zigbee. The other mPCIe supports 4G, Wi-Fi6, GbE and SATA (via PCIe). 


RAK7391 WisGate Connect block diagram
(click image to enlarge)

The WisGate Connect also offers one HDMI 2.0 port (4K @60Hz) one 22-pin MIPI DSI connector and camera support via dual 22-pin MIPI CSI connectors. 

The ethernet interface includes one 2.5 Gigabit LAN RJ45 port and one Gigabit LAN RJ45 port. Other peripherals found in this board include two USB 2.0, two USB 3.0, one USB type–C used for updating the CM4 and a UART port used for debugging.


RAK7391 layout
(click image to enlarge)

The RAK7391 is powered via a 10-28 VDC power jack or via phoenix connectors and it also includes a battery backed RTC to wake up the RPi CM4. 

This board also has two WisBlock IO slots to interface with industrial sensors such as gas sensors, vibration sensors, DC current sensors. The RAK7391 is also compatible with a PoE module kit (RAK9063A) that can deliver up to 30W of power.

The company has provided two GitHub repositories that provides examples using the WisBlock modules using Python and NodeRed . The whole collection of WisBlock can be found using this link.

     
Software structure (left) and Portainer apps templates list (right)
(click images to enlarge)

For software development, RAKwireless suggest to use their own RAKPiOS (based on the official Raspberry Pi OS) which includes Portainer to speed up and simplify deploying apps such as Zigbee2MQTT, NodeRed, LoRa Basics, Eclipse Mosquitto, etc. See the list above for more details. Refer to the product’s Wiki for more information.

 
RAK7391 metal enclosure (left) and carrier board (right)
(click images to enlarge)

RAKwireless also mentioned they will soon release a RakPiOS-CLI (Command Line Interface) to help users configure the device and deploy services easier.  

WisGate Connect announcement RAK7391
 Further information

The RAK7391 WisGate Connect can be found on RAKwireless online store and it starts at $149. There is also a metal enclosure which exposes all the ports which is available for $49. 

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