$4 Orange Pi 4/4B PCIe Expansion Board Includes an mPCIe socket, and a SIM card Slot

Rockchip RK3399 based Orange Pi 4 & 4B boards launched last year with a PCIe connector. But the PCIe interface is available via a 24-pin FPC connector, not quite a standard like a PCIe slot or mPCIe socket, and hard to use for most projects as you’d need to make your own PCIe adapter board.

But it’s now become much easier to use the PCIe interface as Shenzhen Xunlong Software has now launched a $3.90 expansion board connecting to the 24-pin FPC connector, and allowing users to connect mPCIe cards, especially the ones for 3G/4G connectivity as a SIM card slot is also included.PCIe expansion board specifications:

24-pin FPC PCIe connector to Orange Pi 4/4B with PCIe, USB, power “key”, and GPIO1_A0 (See schematics below)
mPCIe card socket
SIM card socket
Misc – Reset key
Dimensions – 58 x 32 mm

Orange Pi 4 PCIe Schematics — Orange Pi 4/4B PCIe Connector – Click to Enlarge

The company confirmed the PCIe interface should work in both Android and Linux. It might be good if they made an M.2 expansion card for M.2 SSD’s, but it’s not available yet.

The mPCIe expansion card is sold on Aliexpress with a 24-pin flat cable, but shipping nearly doubles the price to $7.76 in total to my location. So if you haven’t purchased an Orange Pi 4 yet, you may want to wait a bit as the company will provide kits with both boards in the next few days. Just monitor the new arrivals section on Orange Pi Aliexpress store.

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.