At just 12mm thickness, CutiePi is a highly portable and probably the world’s thinnest Raspberry Pi-based tablet by the Taiwanese startup CutiePi. Additionally, the CutiePi tablet is 100% open source and hackable that lets you customize it as you want.
Here 100% open source means absolutely everything, including hardware design, firmware, middleware, driver enclosure, and user interface.
CutiePi Hardware Specifications
Firstly, the core of the CutiePi is a custom PCB, the CutiePi board. This CM3/CM3+ compatible carrier board comes with features for portable use and is a proud OSHWA-certified open-source hardware. Above all, the CutiePi features the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3+, which has the same quad -A53 Broadcom BCM2837B0 SoC found on the Raspberry Pi 3B+.
The absence of a PMIC, does not enable the 0.2GHz boost to 1.4GHz available on the SBCs, however they have some similarities like the 400MHz VideoCore IV GPU. There is a carrier board by CutiePi that enables a PMIC, and features a STM32 MCU. In other words, the CutiePi has similar features to the $25 “Lite” version of the CM3+. It enables 1GB LPDDR2 RAM.
There is no flash memory however, it is equipped with circuitry for connecting to a microSD slot, which acts as the major storage connector on the CutiePi. The single USB 2.0 host port can serve as an auxiliary connector for storage.
CutiePi User Interface
To make the look and feel of CutiePi visually more appealing, it includes a home-baked mobile user interface called CutiePi shell. Above all it is specially developed and optimized to run smoothly on the Raspberry Pi OS and CutiePi hardware.
CutiePi shell is built using the open-source Qt framework, that offers a beautiful and modern graphical interface. Currently, it supports the following functionality:
- Lockscreen with sleep/wake button event handling
- Built-in web browser, terminal emulator, and on-screen keyboard
- Side-tab for multitasking
- Wi-Fi configurator
- Battery charging status and level reading (through UART)
- Orientation sensor support (accelerometer and gyroscope)
How to Buy
The CutiePi is available for pre-order on Kickstarter. The $169 and $179 early bird package is no longer available, but you can get the overslept bird for $189 before the price is increased to $199. Retail price goes for $229.
Available also is a $89 package that offers two of the tablet’s carrier boards without the Raspberry Pi CM3+ modules. The shipment will begin in November 2020.
