Sentinel Core

https://x.com/pepijndevos/status/1925869423131234567

This hype post shared the influencer glow-up: screenshot of Jeff Geerling's YouTube thumbnail with green Sentinel Core PCB + massive ASUS ROG Strix GPU on wooden desk, cables bundled, mechanical keyboard and WD PiDrive nearby—logo gleaming under soft light, mini-ITX form screaming versatility. His "Private AI Keyboard (CM5 Roundup)" vid praises PCIe for GPUs/storage, demos 20+t/s LLM on budget AMD, edges over Intel N100 mini-PCs for ARM efficiency. Validated PCB iterations, sparked pre-orders—pure "Joepie!!" joy after months of KiCad grinds.

https://x.com/pepijndevos/status/1876263099429429384

This post dropped the GPU bomb: 32-second video of cluttered desk and silver PC case with Sentinel Core inside, power button press spins AMD RX 7600 XT fans (audible hum), POST flashes AMD/RPi logos, loads Home Assistant OS CLI with scrolling green boot text—"Booting the Home Assistant CLI..." and network prompts—hits login on monitor by 30s, stable no crashes. Proves full PCIe Gen3 passthrough on CM5 ARM, turning $100 SBC into discrete-GPU monster for local LLMs via llama.cpp/whisper.cpp/Piper. Foundation for voice assistants/NAS, offline inference at 20+t/s—tinkerer's high after PCIe Ethernet win.

https://x.com/pepijndevos/status/1875088272051085429

This explosive thread proved PCIe passthrough magic: desk chaos with green board central, silver Intel I350 Ethernet card slotted in (heatsink visible), USB-C powered, yellow cable to router, green LED lit—lspci terminal detects "Intel 82580 Gigabit via BCM2712 bridge," ifconfig shows eth2 at 192.168.0.66, Network Manager GUI confirms 1000 Mb/s full duplex, stable pings no drops. Follow-ups tease GPU/HA/LLM next, potential production run for DIY Raspi servers, and wild ideas like routers, TPUs, data acquisition, or Frigate NVRs—community buzzing with @geerlingguy
nods. "If this does numbers... stick around," I said, hyping non-GPU uses like industrial IO. 1Gbps ARM PCIe? Game-changer for SFF.

https://x.com/pepijndevos/status/1874803987212341505

This thread was the power-up saga: video of hands soldering USB-C pins with glowing iron tip against the black heatsink area, vise clamping the board on a cluttered desk with CM5 module waiting. Then success—green LEDs flicker on, fans whir from headers, boot to Raspberry Pi OS CLI with green-on-black "Welcome... pi@raspberrypi:~ $" terminal. eMMC imaging hurdles hit hard (RPi docs buried, third-party gaps), USB boot saves the day for flashing, but initial attempts flop—blaming my "terrible solder job" or laptop juice, with a close-up of the suspect connector and a failed flash screenshot. By evening, eMMC's imaged via USB, booting persistently; photo of lit board with yellow Ethernet dangling. @Raspberry_Pi
called out for silence, but official guide unearthed—PCIe dreams next, no crashes on core IO at ~5W idle.

https://x.com/pepijndevos/status/1874089273184514329/ This quick post was just the mechanical win: mounting the bare green PCB in the open silver mini-ITX chassis on my wooden desk, screw holes aligning perfectly, IO brackets lining up for HDMI/USB cutouts and rear PCIe slot—tools and a red soldering mat scattered around. No power yet, but it screamed "SFF ARM beast incoming," validating the KiCad layout after weeks of dimension nightmares. Pure relief before the real sparks flew.

https://x.com/pepijndevos/status/1873710154027577669/ This thread captured the raw arrival and first tests of the prototype PCB straight from the fab: unboxing the green mini-ITX board on bubble wrap, admiring the layout with HAT pins, dual HDMI, USB 3.0, Ethernet, M.2-turned-PCIe slot, fan headers, and ATX power connector—silkscreen labels like "Designed with KiCad" and jumpers for eMMC flashing screaming fresh hacker pride. Next day, it slots perfectly into a silver ITX case for a fit check, rear PCIe exposed. Then power-on frenzy: shaky video of soldering the USB-C amid flux smoke and tools, green LEDs lighting up (Ethernet glowing), fans spinning, but eMMC flashing drama—Raspberry Pi docs save it after USB fallback works, imaging the drive for persistent boot. Screenshots of CLI welcomes and network config, with a quick "Life!!!!!" boot terminal. Minor solder woes on USB-C suspected, but PCIe testing queued—80% excitement, 20% dread of a dud.

https://x.com/pepijndevos/status/1862079466530386130

This thread kicked off the whole madness: I quoted my own gripe about no off-the-shelf CM5 board with a full x16 PCIe slot and 24-pin ATX power, so screw it, time to design one. Starting from the open RPi CM5 IO board, I modded it for mini-ITX sizing (160x90mm to 170x170mm—plenty of extra real estate), swapped M.2 for PCIe, brainstormed that space for Zigbee (ripping the MGM210PA32JIA2 from Home Assistant Yellow with open firmware), storage sans compromising PCIe, or even a full Arduino. Dove deep into KiCad hell: differential pair routing for PCIe (shoutout Digikey tutorial), Claude-generated pin labels for the 164-pin socket, power puzzles like ATX PS_ON# logic with PWR_BUT and MOSFETs, USB-C vs. A port debates, and fan headers (PWM to 12V follower?). Layout fights over PCIe positioning (micro-ATX vs. ISA datum insanity, grid mm/inch mismatches), paper-print sanity checks against my old ATX mobo, and a PCI/PCIe dimension whoopsie. By Dec 9, schematic/layout mostly locked—GitHub repo live at https://github.com/pepijndevos/rpi-cm5io-mini-itx—ready to fab, but sweating the debug without a fast scope.