Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 Machine Learning With Seeed's reTerminal

Seeed Studio announced the reTerminal, its latest addon for the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4. This $195 Compute Module 4 machine learning and industrial application carrier board comes enclosed inside a robust case and sports a 5-inch touchscreen and plenty of expansion possibilities. 

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Seeed's reTerminal works with all models of the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4. For the $195 price tag, it comes with a Compute Module 4 with 4GB RAM and 32GB of eMMC flash. You can easily swap out the Compute Module 4 if you need to change the config to accommodate your use case.
 
The 5-inch capacitive touch LCD has a 1280 x 720 (293 PPI) resolution, much more useful than 800 x 480 resolutions found on other screens. On the front of the unit, we see four user buttons, which can be programmed as required for useful quick access to common tasks.

On reTerminal’s left side, we find two USB 2.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, micro HDMI output (4Kp60), and a USB C power input for the 5V 4A required to power the unit. On the other side, we see a breakout for the Raspberry Pi GPIO. This is not directly compatible with add ons/HATs, but we can use one of the many Raspberry Pi add-on boards with a breakout board.

On the rear, we see a finned radiator used to keep the Compute Module 4's 1.5 GHz quad-core Cortex-A72 CPU cool. We can only assume that this is passive cooling as there is no mention of active cooling. Also present is a MIPI camera interface, which enables using the official Raspberry Pi Camera and the HQ Camera. A useful addition when we consider that reTerminal is aimed at machine learning applications such as Edge Impulse, PyTorch and TensorFlow. An interesting addition is an industrial high-speed interface, which provides a PCIe 1 lane host, an additional USB 2.0 port, 28 GPIOs, and Power over Ethernet, according to the press release.

A series of M4 screw mounts at various points around the device are used to secure the reTerminal to several external modular accessories. We can see an industrial GPIO breakout from the supplied images and a unit that connects to the industrial high-speed breakout connector. We find a standard camera mount at the bottom of the unit, enabling reTerminal to be held in place using many different camera accessories.

A series of sensors are hidden inside of the reTerminal. First, we have a mic array that can be used with machine learning for voice recognition projects, an accelerometer for display rotation, data collection and gesture input, and a light sensor with proximity detection. An onboard real-time clock provides a means to keep your Compute Module 4's clock in time, useful for projects where connectivity to NTP servers could be problematic.

Seeed's reTerminal looks to be a nice and tidy means to use a Raspberry Pi Computer Module 4-powered machine for machine learning. Tom's Hardware will have all of the reTerminal information you need in a future review. Seeed is offering $5 off if you register here.