Pi Compute Module 4

The Raspberry Pi Compute Module is an interesting concept mostly designed for embedded solutions.

A regular Raspberry Pi gives you an HDMI slot, a camera slot, GPIO Pins, USB, audio, etc. but a CM4 with the proper board can give you a PCIe slot, onboard SATA, or onboard NVME M.2

But where are those boards?

I’m looking for a board that will do NVME M.2 natively for a 3.15″ SSD.  I simply can’t find one.

You can take the official Raspberry Pi IO Board and add a PCIe adapter to achieve this but it is kind of a kluge the way it sits in the slot and to date I’ve seen no specific cases that would hold the board securely.

Plus if you give up that PCIe lane to the adapter you can’t use it for other cool things.

What’s a geek to do?

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I got the inspiration to build up this Raspberry Pi NAS with a Compute Module and SATA adapter from Jeff Geerling.  His blog page is here (linked with permission).  If you like Raspberry Pi even a little bit this guy pushes the Pi to the extreme.  His computer, networking, and Linux skills are exceptional and his delivery is easy to understand.  If you visit his blog click the YouTube icon on the right side of the page and visit his channel.  

Decided to turn my Pi Compute Module 4 into Network Attached Storage (NAS).  A real NAS.  While a Raspberry Pi NAS won’t light the networking world on fire it is more than adequate to serve up files.  I want to put this NAS out in my Shed for two reasons.

• Redundant backup in case the house burns down
• Use Squeezelite client to stream audio to my shed stereo, a circa 1980’s Technics Receiver.

I have a mini-ITX case and guts to put a “real” server out there but my shed is a woodworking shop and push come to shove I’d rather gum up the fan and overheat  $100 worth of Pi and Compute Module IO board than to blast a $450 server motherboard.  Besides lots of sawdust it gets wicked hot and wicked cold in the shed too. This computer is going to get dirty and this is a choice of economics as much as anything.

Making a Pi NAS is easy but it also ends up being a spaghetti mess and unless you design and 3D print a custom case the Compute Module just isn’t organically designed to fit any standard case out there.  We gotta get creative.

My cheap case is a Mini ITX case.  How I dealt with the installation was to keep the 500 watt power supply intact and to 3D print a case for the Compute Module IO board.  Then I just double side taped that to the inside of the enclosure.  Here’s a quick video of the build with details to follow.

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I built my first Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 project.  A 1TB NAS Drive using an NVME drive.

CM4 with NVME on PCIe Connector

These are the required parts:

Let’s talk about the parts somewhat.

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I’m writing this blog because of something I learned the hard way and that I just did not understand.  I, of course, hopes this helps someone else.

I just start playing with the Raspberry Pi Compute Module and Carrier boards and I recently received the Official Pi IO Board for the Compute Module 4.  I decided the first thing I wanted to do was make use of the PCIe slot on the board.

And that’s where the trouble began.

There are LOTS of great web pages on Pi Carrier Boards and PCIe configuration but this issue slipped me up for over a day.

I ordered an NVME adapter and a Samsung EVO 970 Plus NVME drive and the adapter arrived first.  So I decided to go ahead and get it set up and ready for the NVME drive.

And this is really where the trouble began.

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The Raspberry Pi debuted on February 29th, 2012.  Wow, has it been 10 years already?  Makes me feel old.

The original concept of the Pi was to teach British schoolchildren how to program and code.  What really made it stand out was the COST which was $35.  It also used Linux which meant it was relatively fast and ran on limited resources.  The original Pi had some bottlenecks, especially around USB and Ethernet but it did all work and at a $35 price tag it was ripe for hacking and that’s just what the geeks did.

My first Pi was a breeze to set up and my first project was something called Logitechmediaserver (LMS) and Squeezelite which was a streaming media server and client for Pandora, Spotify, and a now defunct music platform called MOG.  A comparable platform these days is something called Sonos.  I challenge you build a Sonos System for as cheap as you can build an LMS server.

If you plugged in a Digital to Analog Converter (DAC) to the USB of the pi you could stream to any stereo aux input.   To this day I have several Pi LMS clients in my house.   Our current house has built in speakers all over the house and we can stream anything we want to them.  Right now I just use Spotify and TuneIn.  They have since added Tidal to their lineup as well.

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I got my first Raspberry Compute Module 4 and installed it in a Geekpi CM4 Router Board.  And then cue the fun.  It is cool but it isn’t quite ready for plug and play prime time.   It was quite a challenge to get everything running.

First of all there are several images to download on the GitHub page and I just wasn’t sure which one to use.   The image that supposedly allowed the OLED display to work somehow or another didn’t have a working ETH1 wan port after installation.  A router without a wan port isn’t worth a shit and it sure isn’t a router.  Pardon my French.

So then the image with the ETH1 wan port working didn’t have a working OLED display.  FML.   In the great scheme of things the OLED being functional isn’t that important and that’s the direction I decided to go.  Then I figured out how to get the OLED on which is a hack.

Here’s how it happened:

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I bought my 1st Raspberry Pi when the 1st version came out.  I think my intention was to make a streaming music server out of it, which I did using logitechmediaserver. Logitechmediaserver is a MUCH CHEAPER implementation of Sonos.  You’ve heard of Sonos, right?  Ever since them I have used the Raspberry Pi for all sorts of things.  Off the top of my head I can list:

• Music Server
• File Server with Samba
• Temperature and Humidity Platform (with added sensors)
• Hot Tub Hot Water Sensor and Alarm
• 433 MHz Weather Station
• Motion Cameras
• NAS Server with OpenMediaVault
• Dakboard (showing news feed, weather, calendar, etc)
• Police Scanner with OP25
• Streaming police scanner with IceCast
• Home Assistant for Home Automation
• Software Defined Radio Spyserver
• PiAware for tracking aircraft
• Satellite Tracking
• 3D printer server with Octoprint
• CNC G Code Sender
• Kodi Media Server

I bet you that I’m missing a whole lot of stuff too.  That’s all I could think of quickly.  But that’s a lot. Raspberry Pi variants have served me well over the years, helped teach me Linux, and is still a workhorse around my house.

So why would you get a Raspberry Pi in a Compute Module footprint?  I’ll try to answer that.

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