Sanctuary Systems’ Sentinel Core is a Raspberry Pi CM5 mini-ITX carrier board featuring a PCIe x16 slot for graphics card connectivity, boosting 3D graphics, video transcoding, and AI tasks. It’s an expanded Raspberry Pi CM5 IO board with a prototyping area, PCIe slot, and 24-pin ATX power connector. Additional features include two HDMI ports, a Gigabit Ethernet port, two USB 3.0 ports, MIPI DSI/CSI connectors, and a 40-pin GPIO header.
Key specifications:
– Supports Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 through 2x 100-pin B2B connectors
– Video output via 2x HDMI 2.0 ports
– Gigabit Ethernet port and optional WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5.x
– USB ports: 2x USB 3.0, 1x USB 2.0 Type-C
– PCIe: High-speed, full-length PCIe x16 slot (PCIe 3.0 unofficially supported)
– Expansion: 40-pin GPIO header, prototyping area
– Power: 12 V via 24-pin ATX connector
– Size: 170 x 170 mm (mini-ITX form factor)
The Sentinel Core is an open-source project with KiCAD design files available on GitHub. The documentation provides guidance for hardware selection, assembly, Home Assistant configuration, and AI Voice Assistant setup with add-ons like Llama.cpp, Whisper, Piper, and Wyoming speech integration.
The Sentinel Core uniquely offers a PCIe slot for a graphics card, unlike other mini-ITX boards like the EDATEC ED-SBC3300 and EXAVIZ Cruiser, which focus on other applications. It ships with an I/O faceplate, requiring a Raspberry Pi CM5, a CM5 heatsink, and additional components. Despite recent price increases for Raspberry Pi, current CM5 owners can benefit from this cost-efficient alternative to x86 systems.
Sanctuary Systems has launched the Sentinel Core on Crowd Supply with support for Raspberry Pi CM5 modules. A $129 pledge is required for the motherboard, with additional options for the CM5 Wireless, antenna kit, and heatsink. Shipping is free for the board itself; accessories have extra shipping charges and will ship this month, while the Sentinel Core is expected by August 2026.
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