Supported Platforms

pcu supports two In-CarPC platform families. Each has a different set of hardware features, so some pages in this documentation apply to one platform and not the other.

Platform	Hardware feature
In-CarPC CQ20	Ignition power sequencing
In-CarPC CQ40 series	Digital inputs and outputs

Platform support is still growing

pcu is new software, and the list above is where it stands today, not where it is going. Support is being added in two directions at once:

More models. pcu currently recognises the CQ20 and the CQ40 series. Older In-CarPC models are being backported, one family at a time, and more will be supported soon. If pcu does not recognise your machine, that is expected for now rather than a fault.

More features per model. Each platform only exposes the features pcu has implemented for it so far. Ignition mode, for example, is read-only today and a future update will make it settable from the app and the CLI. The feature table below reflects the current release, so re-check it after an update rather than assuming it is fixed.

If your machine is not supported yet, use the CQUtils program preinstalled on the desktop in the meantime. It covers the older models and stays on the machine after pcu is installed, so you are not left without a way to configure the hardware.

Two things that help us:

• If pcu reports an unrecognised board on genuine In-CarPC hardware, send us the Detected board: line it prints (see below). That line is what we need to add the model.
• If you need a specific model or feature sooner, tell us. Contact In-CarPC support with the machine and what you are trying to do, and we will tell you where it sits in the queue.

How pcu detects your platform

Detection is automatic. On startup, pcu reads the board identity that the BIOS reports and matches it against the platforms it knows. There is no platform to pick and nothing to configure.

Before it writes anything to the hardware, pcu confirms the board really is the model it detected. If that check fails, it stops without touching the hardware. This is deliberate: pcu will not write to an MCU on hardware it does not recognise.

If pcu does not recognise the machine, it reports the board it found, for example:

Detected board: Dave's Discount Motherboards / TOASTER-9000

along with the list of supported systems. If you see this on genuine In-CarPC hardware, send that Detected board: line to In-CarPC support.

Feature comparison

Feature	In-CarPC CQ20	In-CarPC CQ40 series
Ignition timers	Yes	No
Digital I/O	No	Yes
Firmware and status reporting	Yes	No

“Firmware and status reporting” covers the firmware version and the low-level register readout the CQ20 MCU provides. The CQ40 series does not expose a firmware version, so it does not report one; that is normal, not a fault.

The pcu-cli status command runs on both platforms and prints whatever the connected hardware supports.

In-CarPC CQ20

The CQ20 is a fanless Intel Atom x6425E (Elkhart Lake) machine. Its ignition MCU is reached over the PCH SMBus. This is the platform that provides the ignition power sequencing described in Ignition Timers. It has no digital I/O.

On a CQ20, pcu-cli status reports:

• MCU Identity: CQ20 MCU
• Hardware Rev: DTB-IGN-MCU VER:10
• Firmware: 12

Tested configurations:

Operating system	BIOS	Validated
Windows 11 25H2 (x64)	CQ20B01	May 2026
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (x64)	CQ20B01	May 2026

In-CarPC CQ40 series

The CQ40 series covers the CQ41, CQ43, and CQ47 models. They share the same Haswell-era Intel platform and reach their I/O through the SuperIO GPIO ports. This is the platform that provides the Digital I/O described in this section: two digital inputs, two digital outputs, and an ignition sense line. It has no ignition timers.

On a CQ40 series machine, pcu-cli status reports its MCU identity as CQ40 GPIO Controller. The CQ40 series does not report a firmware version.

Tested configurations:

Operating system	BIOS	Validated
Windows 10 22H2 (x64)	CQ40B02	Apr 2026

Linux support on the CQ40 series is pending validation

The software supports the CQ40 series on Linux, but this combination has not yet been validated on hardware. On Linux the CQ40 GPIO is reached through /dev/port, which needs elevated access. See Install on Linux for how that access is granted, and the Digital I/O page for what the channels do.

Checking the platform from a script

pcu-cli version --json includes the platform pcu detected, the full list of supported platforms, and their validated configurations. This is the machine-readable way to confirm what a fleet machine is before running platform-specific commands. See Scripting and Automation for the field reference.