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This looks great, but for a new form-factor, why put the USB-C PD power port on another side than the other USB/Ethernet side? The Raspberry Pi is a great devi

This looks great, but for a new form-factor, why put the USB-C PD power port on another side than the other USB/Ethernet side? The Raspberry Pi is a great device at any price point, but the biggest fault, in my opinion, is that there are critical ports on all four sides, which means cables snaking out of it on three of the four sides, and SD card access on the fourth. Moving the power to the same side as the USB/Network would improve packaging considerably.

yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
I broadly agree with moving ports together, but in this case I'm not sure there's room without making the board bigger or stacking ports (which I assume would significantly complicate things).
walrus01 6y ago
I have seen a number of different rackmount case designs intended to vertically mount a number of raspberry pi 3b/4 boards in something like a shallow depth, 3U enclosure. One of the design problems has been that the power jack is on the other side from the networking. Some people have solved it by additional DC-DC circuitry as a hat to power them from 802.3af. And the microsd card is accessed from the other side. But some model of rpi with all of its external connections along one side of the PCB would be very helpful for doing this with less third-party hacked up solutions involved.
geerlingguy 6y ago
I feel like someone should basically build the Pi 400, but use a Compute Module 4 at the heart... like I wish the Pi Foundation would've done, for upgradeability.
- dijit 6y ago
  the compute modules rarely (if ever) support backwards compatibility. At least not that I've ever seen.
  - geerlingguy 6y ago
    Up until the CM4, every generation of CM (original CM, CM3, CM3+) worked in the exact same slot on the same hardware. I know this because I tested a mixed cluster with all three on a Turing Pi board :) Additionally, upgrading from a 1 GB Lite module to an 8 GB 32 GB eMMC module could also be possible if they were swappable.
thinkmassive 6y ago
Having all ports on one side is one of many reasons I like the Argon ONE case. It uses an add-on board to redirect the A/V and power ports, which also converts the HDMI ports to full sized versions. https://www.argon40.com/argon-one-v-2-case-for-raspberry-pi-5.html https://www.argon40.com/argon-one-v-2-case-for-raspberry-pi-...

yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago

I broadly agree with moving ports together, but in this case I'm not sure there's room without making the board bigger or stacking ports (which I assume would significantly complicate things).

walrus01 6y ago

I have seen a number of different rackmount case designs intended to vertically mount a number of raspberry pi 3b/4 boards in something like a shallow depth, 3U enclosure. One of the design problems has been that the power jack is on the other side from the networking. Some people have solved it by additional DC-DC circuitry as a hat to power them from 802.3af. And the microsd card is accessed from the other side. But some model of rpi with all of its external connections along one side of the PCB would be very helpful for doing this with less third-party hacked up solutions involved.

geerlingguy 6y ago

I feel like someone should basically build the Pi 400, but use a Compute Module 4 at the heart... like I wish the Pi Foundation would've done, for upgradeability.

dijit 6y ago
the compute modules rarely (if ever) support backwards compatibility. At least not that I've ever seen.
- geerlingguy 6y ago
  Up until the CM4, every generation of CM (original CM, CM3, CM3+) worked in the exact same slot on the same hardware. I know this because I tested a mixed cluster with all three on a Turing Pi board :) Additionally, upgrading from a 1 GB Lite module to an 8 GB 32 GB eMMC module could also be possible if they were swappable.

thinkmassive 6y ago

Having all ports on one side is one of many reasons I like the Argon ONE case. It uses an add-on board to redirect the A/V and power ports, which also converts the HDMI ports to full sized versions. https://www.argon40.com/argon-one-v-2-case-for-raspberry-pi-5.html https://www.argon40.com/argon-one-v-2-case-for-raspberry-pi-...