Acme has launched a rugged, 22mm thick “CM3-Panel” 7-inch capacitive touch-panel computer built around a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3. Four models are available: WiFi, USB, WiFi and 868MHz Yarm RF, or USB and Yarm.

Acme has followed up on last December’s CM3-Home home automation carrier board for the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3 with a 7-inch touch-panel computer built around the RPi CM3. The open spec CM3-Panel is less than 22mm thick and supports -20 to 70°C temperatures. It’s available in four different models, including two with modules that support Acme’s open source 868MHz Yarm RF radio module spec.

CM3-Panel (left) and GPIO assignments
(click images to enlarge)

The four CM3-Panel models are as follows:

• CM3-Panel-U — USB 2.0 port — 95 Euros ($113)
• CM3-Panel-W — 2.4GHz WiFi — 99 Euros ($118)
• CM3-Panel-UY — USB and 868MHz Yarm ISM — 115 Euros ($137)
• CM3-Panel-WY — 2.4GHz WiFi and 868MHz Yarm ISM– 119 Euros ($142)

CM3-Home

The 868MHz Yarm module, which is also available on the CM3-Home, is compatible with Acme’s ISM 868MHz Energy Harvesting radio nodes. The module is equipped with a Cortex-M0+ based, 22 x 14mm Microchip ATA8510 ISM transceiver. The CM3-Panel has a separate array of Yarm GPIO in addition to the main Raspberry Pi GPIO. The optional RaLink RT5370N 2.4GHz WiFi module is based on USB 2.0, and is “fully supported by the latest Kernel Linux versions,” says Acme.

The shopping page says the RPi CM3 module is part of the priced bundle, although the product page says only that the board has a socket for the CM3. It may be possible to buy in volume and bring your own module.

It’s unclear if this is the standard $30 version of the CM3 with 4GB eMMC or the $25, non-eMMC “Lite” version found on the CM3-Home. Both CM3 models provide a quad-core, Cortex-A53 Broadcom BCM2837 SoC clocked to 1.2GHz, as well as the standard 400MHz VideoCore IV GPU.

Detail view of CM3-Panel mainboard with Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3
(click image to enlarge)

In addition to the 1GB of LPDDR2 RAM on the module, the CM3-Panel integrates a microSD slot. Optional, 20-Euro ($24) 8GB microSD cards are available with modified versions of Rasbian Stretch Lite or Rasbian Stretch Desktop.

Features available on all four versions of the CM3-Panel, which was first reported in this CNXSoft post, include a 7-inch, 800 x 480 touchscreen with a 90-degree viewing angle. The mainboard is also equipped with a 12-24V DC input and a MIPI-CSI connector for the Raspberry Pi Camera. There are up to 24x available GPIO lines, including LCD, camera, SPI, PWM, serial, PCM, and I2C controls.

The CM3-Panel appears to be an open hardware product, as it is accompanied by a schematic, mechanical drawing, and a 3D step model. Customization features for the mainboard start at $139 Euros per piece for a minimum order of 100 pieces.

Other Raspberry Pi CM3-based touch panels include Distec’s 10.1-inch POS-Line IoT and Comfile’s 7- and 10.2-inch ComfilePi.

 
Further information

The CM3-Panel is available starting at 95 Euros ($113). More information may be found on Acme Systems’ CM3-Panel product page.