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Halos Update: A Browser-First OS for Raspberry Pi

2026-01-02
Matti Airas

Halos Update: A Browser-First OS for Raspberry Pi I made an announcement late October 2025 about Halos, a new end-user friendly Raspberry Pi OS variant that is browser-first and thus accessible over any device. The first announcement turned out to be a bit premature as the initial foundation got thoroughly redesigned. But now, however, the dust is starting to settle!

Halos - A Modern Container-Based Raspberry Pi OS for Marine and IoT Applications

2025-10-27
Matti Airas

Halos - A Modern Container-Based Raspberry Pi OS for Marine and IoT Applications We’re excited to announce Halos (Hat Labs Operating System), a new Raspberry Pi OS distribution designed from the ground up for modern, web-managed server applications.

Finalizing the HALPI2 Software and Production

2025-05-31
Matti Airas

For more information about HALPI2, see the HALPI2 product page and the previous posts about HALPI2: HALPI2 Available for Pre-orders and HALPI2 Thermal Performance.

HALPI2 Thermal Performance

2025-05-02
Matti Airas

I received the second HALPI2 prototype (v0.2.0) PCBs two days ago and have been testing them. They’re a definite improvement over the first protos: the USB3 hub works flawlessly, and the form factor now fits the enclosure perfectly. The bad news is that the display connectors are still not working because yours truly failed to address the v0.1.0 PCB’s trivial design error properly. It still remains to be seen whether this affects the release schedule or not.

HALPI2 Available for Pre-orders

2025-04-24
Matti Airas

I am excited to announce that HALPI2 is now available for pre-orders! Go place your order at Hatlabs shop!

HALPI2 Prototype Update

2025-03-31
Matti Airas

I have been developing a new marine Raspberry Pi computer for the past few months. HALPI2 is a full-fledged Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 (CM5) based custom carrier board packaged in a waterproof cast aluminium enclosure.

Sailor Hat for Raspberry Pi v2 Development Update

2022-12-25
Matti Airas

Introduction The original Sailor Hat for Raspberry Pi had some success as a marine embedded computer power supply and interface board, but the global semiconductor shortage has made it difficult to obtain the required components, and no boards have been manufactured since August 2021. Even though multiple interesting Raspberry Pi CM4 base boards have appeared during the past year, none have provided similar power management features as the SH-RPi. Due to frequent inquiries about the SH-RPi availability, I (Matti Airas) have decided to continue the development of the SH-RPi v2, which will be a completely redesign new version of the Sailor Hat for Raspberry Pi.

SH-ESP32 Revision 2 Now Available

2021-10-19
Matti Airas

We are happy to announce availability of SH-ESP32 rev. 2 boards! The new boards include some minor design changes required for component availability, but the most significant change is that the board now comes pre-assembled with the connectors and headers in place! Additionally, the power input and CAN bus connectors are now 3.81mm pluggable screw terminals, making the board even easier to set up!

Hat Labs and the Global Semiconductor Shortage

2021-09-18
Matti Airas

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a global semiconductor shortage, caused by partial shutdowns of integrated circuit production facilities due to the global lockdowns early 2020 as well as marked increase in the demand of computers and consumer electronics. As a result, many commonly available chips have become totally unavailable or the price has increased many times over. For example, a common real-time clock chip, DS3231MZ used in SH-RPi cost USD 1.61 in low quantities in August 2020, but now the price has increased to over USD 7 at low quantities, with ship date estimates around May or July, 2022. Some of these components can be easily replaced, but most require at least a partial PCB design with prototype rounds and EMC pre-compliance testing.

Create an OpenPlotter Server with Sailor Hat for Raspberry Pi

2021-05-28
Matti Airas

Would you like to build a boat server for displaying fancy dashboards and for logging all historical data of your boat’s behavior, but don’t know where to begin?

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