ControlBlock and PowerBlock Support Raspberry Pi 4 and Momentary Buttons

The Raspberry Pi 4 was recently made available and provides various hardware improvements. However, due to minor changes in the boot-up behaviour the former ControlBlock and PowerBlock add-on boards do not work out-of-the-box with the Raspberry Pi 4. But that is fixed!

The firmware of the two boards was refined and even extended such that the new ControlBlock as well as the PowerBlock are both compatible with the Raspberry Pi 4 now.


In case you are looking for a simple way for adding a safe power button to your (retro-gaming) project you will probably have good time with the PowerBlock or the ControlBlock. Both add-on boards for the Raspberry Pi are well supported by RetroPie. They provide a safe power button and a dynamic power status indication via LED.

These two boards just got an update: From now on both, toggle buttons and momentary buttons, can be used with the boards to implement a safe power button. The boards automatically determine the attached button type. In case of an attached momentary button you also have a “hard-off” function: When you press the button for at least 5 seconds the power is cut off regardless of the status of the Raspberry Pi.

PowerBlock and ControlBlock support Raspberry Pi 4 and momentary buttons
PowerBlock and ControlBlock support Raspberry Pi 4 and momentary buttons

Further Details

You can find further details about this new feature of the PowerBlock and the ControlBlock here.

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