Balena Fin v1.1. Board Standard? V2 Backward Compatible

balenaFin
1

Hi, we’re looking to build a “hat” for our Balena Fin and curious about two things:

  1. Is the Balena Fin board based on some known convention/standard? Noticed the similarities with the TOFU board but not sure if that’s just a coincidence…

  2. If the Balena Fin v2 does include a CM4 processor will the board dimensions and header pins be backwards compatible to Fin v1?

Any advice on what we should consider here for future compatibility would be great. Thanks!

5

Hello @alexanderkjones ,

We haven’t based the v1 balenaFin on any specific standard for the overall shape/size, but we’ve kept full compatibility with the RPi HAT standard.
I’m not aware why the TOFU team decided to use the same for factor as the balenaFin. Perhaps it was so it could fit on existing balenaFin designs, but I don’t know for sure.

It is very unlikely that the v2 balenaFin shares the same form factor as v1, but we will offer a possibility for full HAT compatibility. My suggestion would be to build your HAT according to the standard RPi HAT standard, which will be supported in both versions. It has the added benefit that it would work on any other RPi as well.

Cheers!