New expansion board launched for Strato Pi Max

Sfera Labs has launched the new SuperCaps UPS X2-Series Expansion Board, bringing integrated, supercapacitor-based backup power to its Strato Pi Max XL and XS servers.

The Strato Pi Max is already an extremely compact and versatile industrial controller, based on the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 or 5, with a wide range of swappable expansion boards that adapt it to countless applications. With the addition of the SuperCaps UPS, the platform now acquires built-in protection against power interruptions, ensuring continuous operation and safeguarding critical data.

The expansion board integrates seamlessly with the Strato Pi Max ecosystem. It is particularly valuable in environments where short power outages are common, such as industrial automation systems, building management controllers, smart grids, and edge computing nodes, where even brief interruptions can cause downtime, loss of sensor data, or interrupted communication with the cloud. The expansion board also allows sending alerts when a power outage occurs, enabling remote monitoring systems to react quickly and prevent wider disruption. In applications such as industrial databases or logging systems, the ability to perform a clean shutdown ensures data integrity and prevents the corruption of critical files.

Unlike the existing UPS expansion board for Strato Pi Max, which needs an external lead-acid or AGM battery, the new SuperCaps UPS utilises high-capacity supercapacitors directly integrated onto the board. This results in a more compact, durable, and installation-friendly solution, eradicating the necessity for external cabling, bulky batteries, or periodic battery replacement.

With this launch, the company further extends the flexibility of the Strato Pi Max ecosystem, providing engineers and system integrators with a reliable tool for deploying resilient industrial, IoT, and edge computing solutions in the most demanding environments.