EXPLORER HAT PRO
Assemble basic touch and motor controls
Get tinkering with Les Pounder as he demonstrates two projects using a board which may be old, but is by no means obsolete!
Les Pounder
OUR EXPERT
Les Pounder is associate editor at Tom’s Hardware and a freelance creative technologist. He blogs about his discoveries at bigl.es
YOU NEED
Any model Pi 40 GPIO) Raspberry Pi OS
Project 1: Crocodile clip Metallic object or conductive object USB webcam
Project 2: Two analog joysticks Two DC motors Ten femaleto-male jumper wires
For this month’s tutorial we go back to a board which is now five-years old, but still has plenty of life left in it. The Explorer HAT Pro is an electronics experiment powerhouse that comes with connections for touch inputs, dual motor drivers and analog inputs for analog electronics such as potentiometers. There are also protected inputs and outputs that are 5V Arduino compatible. Oh, and there are some LEDs and breadboard fitted on top just for good measure. We have two projects to build. Project 1 is a gentle introduction to using the board with capacitive touch inputs. Project 2 is a tank controller for two motors using analog thumbsticks.
With the Raspberry Pi powered off, set up the Explorer HAT Pro so that it connects to all of the GPIO pins and sits flush atop the Raspberry Pi. If you have any standoffs, these can be used to screw the Explorer HAT Pro to the Pi.