A few years ago at balena, we designed and built a robust carrier board for the Raspberry Pi 3 Compute Module, specifically targeting IoT use cases, called the balena Fin. We are now starting the design process for a successor, and are asking for input, ideas, and advice on what should be included, excluded, or optional.
Let's talk about form-factor and size, SoC and SoM choices (pros and cons), memory and storage, connectivity, ports and port placement, expansion, and intended use-cases.
Designing a board with community input and dialogue results in a better product in the end, and meets more people's needs. As experts, we'd love to hear your thoughts!
balena leverages, and produces, a lot of open source software. Etcher (flashing utility), balenaOS (Yocto-based operating system), and balenaEngine (Moby-based container runtime) are OSS and available on GitHub, and OpenBalena is an open source IoT Fleet Management platform. On the hardware side of the organization, we want to replicate as much of that openness as possible, and so our design process is all done in the open as well. Thus, let's have a chat about what you think is important and should be included in an industrial strength IoT single board computer.