Learn Robotics Programming

Raspberry Pi Hats

Raspberry Pi Hats (also named Bonnets) are circuit boards designed to plug into the GPIO header and conveniently add capabilities to the Raspberry Pi, such as driving motors or specific sensors. Some allow further use of GPIO pins, and some would require you to use other interface boards to gain access to other pins.

These Hats use GPIO pins for different purposes; for example, audio hats will use the I2s pins for audio interfacing, but some motor controller hats use the same pins as general purpose digital IO pins to control motors instead. Using such hats together would be problematic, so be aware of this when using multiple hats or specific buses. We will explore this more in Chapter 6, Building Robot Basics - Wheels, ...