Electronica: Raspberry Pi gets another I/O board

Electronica: Raspberry Pi gets another I/O board

MUNICH, Germany – U.K. component distributor Premier Farnell has announced it has an exclusive deal with OpenLX SP Ltd. to distribute the PiFace Digital I/O board and will be able to supply both it and a 5-megapixel camera board in the first quarter of 2013. Both items are designed to complement the low-cost, credit-card sized Raspberry Pi computer.

On its Element14-branded booth at Electronica Premier Farnell was showing demonstrations of both peripherals working with the "double-memory" 512-Mbyte version of the Raspberry Pi. It was also demonstrating the first I/O board, the GertBoard, developed by Gert van Loo.

Van Loo said that addition of third-party I/O boards was an essential next step in making Raspberry Pi relevant to developers. "It gets them off the screen and able to do things in the real world," he said.

Raspberry Pi was originally developed by the Raspberry Pi Foundation as a means of teaching computing in U.K. schools but the diminutive single-board computer is gaining traction in commercial markets according to Mike Powell, technical development manager at Premier Farnell.

No information of the breakdown of Raspberry Pi sales between educational and commercial applications was available on the booth.

Unlike the GertBoard, which is powered by an AVR 8-bit microcontroller, the Pi Face runs of the host 700-MHz ARM based Broadcom BCM2835 processor on the Raspberry Pi. It is somewhat more limited than the GertBoard but stacks neatly on top of Raspberry Pi. It accepts four momemtary push-switch signals and has four on-board LEDs. There are two 10-A relays and 8 general purpose open-collector outputs. The board allows the Raspberry Pi to control and sense physical devices such as lights, motors and sensors.



Pi Face Digital I/O board sitting on top of Raspberry Pi computer board

The Pi Face board comes with learning materials designed by the University of Manchester aimed at making the device easy for teachers to use in the classroom.

The separate camera unit developed by the Raspberry Pi Foundation comes on a small PCB with an Omnivision 5-megapixel CMOS image sensor that is capable of 1080p, 30 frame per second imaging. The Raspberry Pi board is capable of H.264 encoding. The camera uses a CSI connection (camera serial interface) to output data at 600-Mbits per second.

Although originally developed for use inside mobile phones the ribbon cable is good for distance of up to about 15-cm, said Powell.

The Pi Face board will sell for about 45 euros (about $60) and the camera board for $25 without a stand, Premier Farnell said.


Related links and articles:

www.raspberrypi.org

www.element14.com

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TAG:Premier Farnell Raspberry Pi Electronica board computer single board computer Broadcom