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In context: The Raspberry Pi is one of the most popular Single Board Computers in the market, and it has been so since the first model was released more than a decade ago. They are great for small DIY projects. Some companies have even used them in commercial products.
A company called Soulscircuit has unveiled a Raspberry Pi 5-powered portable mini PC with a highly modular design. The Pilet is a small tablet PC compatible with a range of accessories. The company hasn't provided all the details about the device as it is still a work in progress, but it confirmed that the Pilet has a metal chassis with a fan for cooling. It also has a touchscreen display, but its size, type, resolution, refresh rate, response time, and other details remain a mystery.
Other notable features include an NVMe SSD for storage and support for a Hailo-8L module for AI processing. The device sports a couple of 8000mAh batteries, which the company claims will offer around 7 hours of usage on a single charge. The Pilet's modular design allows users to hook up a keyboard if they don't care for a touch interface. It also supports a variety of game controllers for effortless gaming.
Soulscircuit built the Pilet with open-source code, meaning users can tweak it in any way they want. It runs Raspberry Pi OS out of the box. However, thanks to Raspberry Pi's inherent flexibility, users can install just about any OS, including a whole host of Linux distros.
The device showcased in the video is only an engineering sample, meaning a lot could change before it becomes available. Soulscircuit doesn't have a price set yet but says it wants to keep it under $200 and is open to changing some of the design elements and hardware components to hit that range.
The Pilet's release date is also unknown, but work on the device is in full swing. Unfortunately, the source code is unavailable for download right now. However, the developers say that they will upload it once the product is ready to ship.