The CutiePi is hardly the first tablet built around one of Raspberry Pi’s tiny, low-cost computers. But it’s a pretty nifty looking addition to the category that combines an 8 inch touchscreen display with a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3 Lite, a custom carrier board, and software to make the Linux-based Raspbian operating system touch-friendly.

CutiePie’s developers have a working prototype and hope to begin selling the tablet later this year. But the whole project is open source, so anyone who wants to build their own can check out the code and hardware design files and give it a try.

By using a Raspberry Pi Compute Module and carrier board rather than a full-sized Raspberry Pi, the developers say they were able to keep the tablet thin.

The developers have also built a touch-friendly user interface using Qt (say it out loud and the “CutiePi” name makes sense). The UI includes a virtual keyboard and support for touch-based gestures including pinch-to-zoom, allowing you to get stuff done without the need to plug in an external mouse, keyboard, or any other hardware.

Planned specs include an 8 inch, 1280 x 800 pixel IPS LCD MIPI DSI display, a 4,800 mAh battery, a USB-A port, a microSD card reader, and 6 GPIO pins.

While the prototype appears to be a touchscreen display connected to the carrier board, images on the CutiePi website show a small tablet with a built-in carrying handle that can be folded to function as a stand.

The tablet’s projected measurements are 8.2″ x 4.9″ x 0.5″ and it’s expected to weigh about 12.3 ounces. In other words, it’s about the size of an Amazon Fire HD 8 tablet (which is 8.4″ x 5″ x 0.4″ and 12.8 ounces).

All of those specs are subject to change, and the folks behind this project aren’t ready to announce a price yet. But the goal is to start selling the CutiePi by the end of 2019.

You can read a little more about the project in the Raspberry Pi forums.

thanks Penk!

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6 replies on “CutiePi is an open source Raspberry Pi-based tablet (coming in late 2019?)”

  1. The form factor I’d like to see is a Pi Zero W powered by and embedded in a custom wall socket, with the USB connection exposed on the wall socket to allow cameras, motion detectors, and other devices to be plugged into the Pi. Then you could have Pi Zero operated devices all over the house as easily as replacing a bunch of wall sockets.

    The only downside might be the limited wifi range inside the walls, but that can probably be resolved by using a mesh or more powerful router.

  2. “the folks behind this project aren’t ready to announce a price yet”

    In other words, it’s going to end up costing so much that nobody but dedicated enthusiasts will buy it. I love the idea behind this tablet, but it has to be price competitive if it’s going to survive.

    1. The problem is that the only way to keep the price down is to sell in volume, and that’s very hard to do for a small company. Everything is more expensive to produce when you’re using limited production runs.

    2. Yup. Just the BOM would be 35-40 for the RasPi CM3+, 60 for the carrier board, 100 for the screen, and figure 5-10 for the case, plus battery, etc. Retail pricing of course, but that puts you in the $250 range easily. It’ll be a niche product. Pentesters will love it, but they already make their own.

      1. 100$ for the screen ? are u sure a sub 10 inch 800P ips screen would cost that much ??

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