Ubo Pod Nears Release and Promises to Make Headless Raspberry Pi Deployment Easy
Ubo Pod is set to release through a Crowd Supply crowdfunding campaign next month.
Raspberry Pi single-board computers are ideal for headless applications that require more processing power than a microcontroller can typically provide. But that comes with a big challenge: a lack of a user interface. Just connecting the device to a Wi-Fi network during deployment can be a real pain — especially if you’re relying on the end user to go through the process. Ubo Pod is product designed to eliminate those headaches and it is nearing release.
We’ve covered the development of the Ubo Pod a couple of times, most recently about seven months ago. Now the project is in the home stretch with release in sight. In fact, V1.0 of the Ubo software is available right now. As an open-source project, you can download that and start using it right away, if you supply your own hardware.
If you want official hardware, you’ll need to wait until the crowdfunding campaign goes live. Mehrdad Majzoobi, the developer behind the project, tells us that it should kick off on Crowd Supply in late February of 2025. By backing that, you’ll get to be among the first to get their hands on the Ubo Pod.
Ubo Pod is more than just an enclosure for a Raspberry Pi; it is a device packed with hardware to dramatically expand the capability of the Raspberry Pi, with a particular focus on setup during deployment. On top, Ubo Pod has a color display and several buttons for navigating menus. Users can, for example, use those to enter their Wi-Fi credentials.
It also has a lot of additional hardware (some of it in the form of optional modules), including: an RGB LED ring, a microphone, an infrared transmitter, an infrared receiver, a camera, a radio dongle, an audio jack, an active cooler, a speaker, a PCIe M.2 adaptor, and an NVMe SSD / Google Coral TPU. All of that is in an enclosure made of aluminum and wood veneer.
The software is completely customizable, but is built to take advantage of apps built for Docker Compose. Developers will be able to use existing apps or create their own to suit more specific needs. There is even a plan in place for V2.0 to add a feature that lets developers run a virtualized Ubo Pod in their browsers, which would be very useful.
To get a notification when the campaign launches on Crowd Supply next month, you can subscribe to updates on the Ubo website.