GPIO boards, Reviews

New expansion boards – Custard Pi 1 & 2 – for the #RaspberryPi

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Two new expansion boards today – Custard Pi models 1 & 2.

Custard Pi 1 is a relatively straightforward GPIO breakout board with lots of over-voltage protection on the pins. Screw terminals are provided for all the usable pins. It is available for £9.50 from eBay.

Custard Pi 2 also breaks out GPIO but adds some bits. Here is a list of all the features: 2 analog inputs, 2 analog outputs, 4 digital outputs, 4 digital inputs plus over-voltage protection. Again, screw terminals are provided. It is available for £19.50 from eBay.

These seem to be neat little boards, especially for those Pi owners who are worried about connecting something up which might damage the Pi. I wonder if they might cause a bit of a reckless attitude towards circuit design – plug it in and assume that the over-voltage protection will save you from mistakes, but I guess that’s the point – very child friendly. Version 1 is marketed as a ‘protection layer’ and Version 2 is marketed as a more general-purpose I/O board.

Here’s a picture of Custard Pi 1:

And one of Custard Pi 2:

More information is available from SF Innovations, the creator of the products.

Overall, they seem like good, well-made products and the screw-terminals are very practical. The price for the second one seems a bit high, but on the other hand you do get those handy analog ports, which would probably be your main reason for choosing it. Documentation is available in the form of User Guides via their website and seems to be in good order with Python code examples.

Events

ACCU conference has several #RaspberryPi sessions / @Raspberry_Pi

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ACCU :: Sessions

The ACCU, which is an organisation of professional programmers, are holding their annual conference in Bristol at the Marriott Hotel from the 9th to the 13th April. There are several Raspberry Pi sessions and here is a list of them:

  • 9th – Hardware for Softies tutorial: Physical computing with the Raspberry Pi (Romilly Cocking / Steve Freeman)
  • 10th – Inspiring future generations with open hardware – the Raspberry Pi – day 1 keynote from Eben Upton.
  • 10th – The Actor Model applied to the Raspberry Pi and the Embedded Domain (Omer Kilic)
  • 10th – Test driven development on the Raspberry Pi (Marc Evers / Rob Westgeest / Willem van den Ende)

More information and registration details can be found on the ACCU website. I think registration is free.