Newark has launched a $77 Raspberry Pi 4 Starter Kit with 4GB RAM, a power supply, 16GB microSD, dual micro-HDMI cables, and a case. Meanwhile, Gumstix is celebrating Pi Day by waiving its $2K Geppetto manufacturing fees for custom RPi designs through April 30.

We haven’t seen much news about community-backed hacker boards this year, due in part to the impact of the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. (SDXCentral just posted a summary of tech trade show closures, delays, or virtual event plans.) So far, the big SBC news for 2020 has been the price reduction for the 2GB RAM version of the Raspberry Pi 4 to $35. Now there’s more good Pi news: Newark has launched a Raspberry Pi 4 Starter Kit and Gumstix is celebrating the Mar. 14 Pi Day celebration by launching free prototype manufacturing for Raspberry Pi customizations (see farther below).

Newark Raspberry Pi 4 Starter Kit

The Newark Raspberry Pi 4 Starter Kit sells for $77.38 with 4GB DDR4, which seems quite reasonable considering that the popular 4GB RAM RPi 4 sells for $55 on its own. The bundle includes a 5V/3A power supply, 2x micro-HDMI conversion cables, and a black or white case.

You also get a 16GB Class 10 microSD card, preloaded with Raspbian NOOBs, as well as a getting started guide. All the components come from Newark’s Multicomp Pro brand.

Raspberry Pi 4

The Raspberry Pi 4’s 28nm fabricated Broadcom BCM2711 SoC features 4x 1.5GHz Cortex-A72 cores with a two to four times the performance of the RPi 3B+. The SBC can output 4K video at 60fps with the help of its VideoCore IV GPU.

The RPi 4 supplies dual-band 802.11ac and Bluetooth 5.0 radios plus a native GbE port with the official PoE HAT. You also get a USB Type-C port for powering the unit, as well as 2x USB 3.0, 2x USB 2.0, 2x micro-HDMI, and an audio jack, among other features.

 
Gumstix custom manufacturing price drop

Embedded Linux board vendor Gumstix is known for its Geppetto online design service, which it also uses to design its own boards. The company announced that the $1,999 manufacturing service for generating prototypes of custom-designed boards will be free for Raspberry Pi based customization projects from Mar. 14 through April 30. The promotion coincides with the Mar. 14 Pi Day, which celebrates the mysterious 3.14159 etc. constant, but in recent years has been hijacked by the Raspberry Pi.

Geppetto Board Builder design process for a Raspberry Pi CM3 based IoT design
(click images to enlarge)

The Gumstix manufacturing service takes 15 days from order to delivery of the prototype, including pre-testing by Gumstix. The company can also manufacture up to 50,000 units for additional fees.

Geppetto offers a drag-and-drop design interface to modify Gumstix’s carrier board designs or start from scratch and build a custom board. The company’s Raspberry Pi related boards include the Gumstix Raspberry Pi Zero Battery IMU board, the Alexa Voice Service enabled Chatterbox Pi for the Raspberry Pi Compute Module, and a variety of Gumstix Pi add-on boards, among others.

Gumstix Raspberry Pi Zero Battery IMU
(click image to enlarge)

The Geppetto service supports custom designs based on a growing number of Linux- and Android driven modules. These include the company’s own DuoVero and Overo modules, as well as Raspberry Pi boards, Toradex Colibri modules, Nvidia Jetson TX2 modules, and more.

 
Further information

The Newark Raspberry Pi 4 Starter Kit is available for $77.38 here, with delivery within 5-7 business days. The Gumstix Geppetto manufacturing service is free for Raspberry Pi designs from Mar. 14 through April 30. More information may be found here.