The Mecha Blog - Announcing the new Mecha Comet
Shoaib Merchant (Founder)
3 min read . 24 March 2025
Hey there, We hope you got a chance to check our live stream on YouTube, even if you didn’t we have you covered. Here is a summary of everything we announced.
Meet the new Comet
Process Upgrade
We are moving from the iMX8M Mini to the more powerful iMX8M Plus, with a significantly better GPU (3x performance) and support for upto 8GB LPDDR4 RAM.
Ports: Display Out and USB 3.0
The new Comet now supports Display Out (upto 1080p on parallel out, and 4k30 on single). All USB-A 2.0s are now USB-C 3.0s. The charging port also can now be used for accessories.
Bigger, better and brighter Display
The display gets a big upgrade, the Comet will now have a 30% bigger (3.92”) AMOLED Display with 1080x1240 resolution. Gets brighter up to 550 nits and supports 5-finger capacitive touch.
M.2 gets LTE/5G Support and more
The M.2 PCIe now supports PCIe 3.0 speeds and 2230/2242/3042 sizes on B-Key. This means you can now use LTE, 5G Modems, LoraWAN modules and AI accelerators or even discrete GPUs.
We ain't done yet - more updates!
Dimensionally now 14 mm at its max thickness, the battery is now 4000 mAH, the Pogo Pins now are female target contacts, supports external antenna (via MMCX), ambient light sensor, phew!
No more Ethernet
Primarily due to the increased size of the M.2 slot, and reduced dimensions, the Ethernet port sadly had to go. You can always convert the dedicated USB 3.0 to Gigabit ethernet using a cable or an adapter.
Launch Plan
Since early January, we have been listening to all feedback, engaging with the community and helping understand what can we do to improve. Eventually, we decided to launch this new Comet instead even if it pushes our launch timeline by 3-4 months.
The new Comet is expected to be on Kickstarter by early or mid Q3 this year, with deliveries starting from Q4.
We don't know for sure of the exact price increase, but you can expect ~15% increase on Kickstarter rewards.
Pilot Program
Since January we have received close to 1000 applications on our Pilot Program, and we have read every one of them. Our first batch of pilot units will start shipping this month to hardware folks to build extensions, and by early Q3 we are planning to ship close to 100 pilot units of the new Comet to selected pilots across the globe.
Developer Docs are now live!
We have released a number of docs on developers.mecha.so for the Mecha Comet, including getting started guides, building the bootloader, kernel, rootFS and flash guides. We have also published 3D files for the extensions and the current revision of the Comet if you would like to get your hands dirty. And that's a wrap, thank you for reading! Watch the stream on YouTube and or if you would like to find out more, discuss or even rant about any of the changes, hit us up on Discord.