I’m excited to announce the immediately availability of a new PCB, the Lo-tech GPIO Interface Board for Raspberry Pi Model B+!
This is the first Lo-tech PCB not targeted at retro computing directly, but the Raspberry Pi is of course an interesting hobby ecosystem in its own right and something that can find a practically unlimited range of use-cases. Looking around for a GPIO interface for the new model, I couldn’t find anything available (OK that was immediately at launch of the new model) and certainly nothing that offers a Radio Shack style build-it-yourself experience, hence why this board now exists.
This board connects directly to the expansion header on the new Mobel B+ Raspberry Pi, and provides 4 opto-isolated inputs and 8 outputs. When powering 8 LEDs and being polled a few times a second, the power consumption of the Raspberry Pi with the board fitted is only around 1-2 Watts, making this combination particularly suitable for embedded applications such as network connecting things around the house for monitoring or alerting.
The board follows the design of the Raspberry Pi B+, making for a tidy installation:
Full technical specifications, schematic, and parts list are available on the wiki page, and PCBs are available in the store now.