ExaViz CM5
ExaViz CM5 is an infrastructure toolkit that transforms the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 paired with the Exaviz Cruiser carrier board into a capable edge compute platform. It provides everything you need to build, deploy, and operate a production-grade aarch64 system running Arch Linux — with AI hardware acceleration, NVR camera surveillance, home automation, and NAS capabilities all on a single board.Quickstart
Build your first CM5 image and get to a running system in minutes.
Image Build
Deep dive into the automated image creation script and its options.
Axelera Metis AI
Set up the Metis M.2 AI accelerator for hardware-accelerated inference.
Frigate NVR
Configure Frigate for AI-powered camera detection using the Metis chip.
Home Assistant
Deploy Home Assistant as a Podman quadlet systemd container.
Operations
Manage Btrfs snapshots, initramfs builds, and early SSH access.
What’s included
The repository provides shell scripts, PKGBUILDs, Podman quadlet units, dracut modules, and udev rules that together implement:- Automated image build —
cm5-setup.shcreates a bootable Arch Linux aarch64 disk image with GPT partitioning, Btrfs subvolumes, UEFI boot, and GRUB - AI acceleration — Axelera Metis M.2 AIPU with DKMS kernel modules, udev device nodes, and Frigate detector integration
- Container services — Home Assistant, Frigate NVR, and Mosquitto MQTT deployed as Podman quadlets under systemd
- Btrfs storage — Multi-subvolume layout (
@,@boot,@swap,@home,@snapshots,@var_log) with Snapper timeline snapshots - Secure boot chain — RPi EEPROM → worproject rpi5-uefi → GRUB arm64-efi → linux-rpi kernel
- Early rescue SSH — Dropbear in the dracut initramfs for pre-mount headless access
- NAS — Samba shares with Apple Time Machine support and optional Gentoo binary package hosting
Hardware requirements
| Component | Details |
|---|---|
| SBC | Raspberry Pi CM5 (any RAM variant) |
| Carrier | Exaviz Cruiser CM5 carrier board |
| AI accelerator | Axelera Metis M.2 (optional but recommended) |
| Storage | eMMC (built-in) + NVMe M.2 or SATA SSD |
| Network | Ethernet (required for DHCP during firstboot) |
| Host machine | x86_64 Linux with QEMU aarch64 user-space emulation |