What about the Raspberry Pi?

As you may have already heard, the Raspberry Pi is a tiny and powerful computer that can run Linux, but it isn’t well equipped for interacting with physical devices. Our project aims to extend the functionality of the Raspberry Pi into the world of microcontrollers. With our board the Raspberry Pi has access to PWMs, high resolution DACs and ADCs, Opamps, Pmod interfaces, Arduino shields and much more! Our board and the RPi can communicate to each other in real time over UART, I2C, or SPI.  Below you can see all the peripherals you would need to buy to even approach the amount of resources built in to our board – and it still doesn’t come close!

Raspberry Pi Expansion
Price
What the RPiSoC comes with onboard
16-Channel 12-bit PWM/Servo Driver – i2c interface
$14.95
Up to 24 16-bit PWM channels
16-Bit ADC – 4 Channel with Programmable Gain Amplifier
$14.95
One 20-bit Delta-Sigma ADC and two 12-bit SAR ADC’s
i2c 16 input/output port expander
$2.95
58 reconfigurable I/O pins
Breakout Board – 12-Bit DAC w/I2C Interface
$4.95
Up to four 8-bit DACs
Real Time Clock breakout board kit
$9.00
An onboard 32.768 kHz crystal for a built-in RTC
8-channel Bi-directional Logic Level Converter
$8.99
The RPiSoC is preconfigured for 5V or 3V3 I/o.
$54.80
These expanders offer less, and cost more!

The RPi can be programmed to send and receive commands from the RPiSoC. We have used Python and C++ for this, but really you can talk to our board in any language, as long as it supports UART, I2C, or SPI. This allows for endless possibilities, from something as simple as controlling servo motors, to home automation through a webserver.

Currently we intend to ship our board with a header that allows the RPiSoC to connect to the RPi through a ribbon cable.

DSC_4284-2

We have developed several projects to demonstrate what our board can do, both with the RPi and standalone. Expect to see those projects and more posted here over the next few months.

Comments (2)

  1. Filipe Altoe (reply)

    February 9, 2015 at 5:23 pm

    Is the RPiSoc commercially available? If so, what is its unit price and/or any volume discount? Do you have available the Python API that executes the communication between your board and the Rpi?
    Thanks
    Filipe

    1. admin (reply)

      February 9, 2015 at 10:13 pm

      The Python API is available on our Github, and we are actively developing more content for it and improving upon it. You can find the most current python source here:

      https://github.com/EmbeditElectronics/psoc_2_pi/tree/master/API_Python

      As for commercial availability of the board, we are quite close to that. We are currently making some minor hardware adjustments, and then we plan to relaunch through Kickstarter for our first production run.

      Thanks for reaching out! We will be ready for business quite soon!
      Brian

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Published on: 13 June 2014
Posted by: admin
Discussion: 2 Comments