If you’ve ever made a Raspberry Pi robot, you’ll know there are some basic essentials to bear in mind: running the motors of your automaton via the Raspberry Pi, and the ability to power the Pi and motors independently without using a trailing power cord. Then there are other, less-necessary bits such as wiring the robot up properly, and the ability to add sensors. These are still important and something you’d have to learn, but there are different layers to cover.
There are some products that try to encompass it all, and RasPiRobot is one of these. It’s a HAT (a board that attaches on top of the Raspberry Pi) offering access to two motor controllers, and will also power the Pi from a battery pack attached to it all for the low price of £18/$30. This covers several of the issues faced when creating a robot; add I2C and ultrasonic sensor connectors on top of this, as well as full access to the GPIO pins the board covers, and you have quite the complete package.
The board is nice and compact, fitting neatly on top of the standard Raspberry Pi B+/2/3 form-factor, and is even smaller than the A+. The board only requires the first 26 GPIO pins, making it functional on the original Model A and B too, in case you have one lying around waiting to be used for something. Everything comes pre-soldered and, honestly, for the price it’s a bit of a steal. Even if it may be slightly more targeted towards novices, it leaves plenty of room to grow.
The board comes with its own Python library, with plenty of examples to figure out how it works. It’s fairly simple, requiring you to make sure the motors and main sensors are plugged into their intended slots, and you can definitely program any robot you create with it very efficiently.
RasPiRobot V3 does what it sets out to do well, at a very good price. If you’re looking to start out in Pi robotics or want to take a step beyond beginners’ kits, you could do a lot worse than this board.
Last word
4/5
An easy-to-use kit that offers a lot of functionality for Raspberry Pi robot makers, with very little fuss or hassle. It’s also very cheap for what you get, making custom robots a more attractive and affordable prospect.
