Gertboard – The Ultimate Raspberry Pi Add-on Board

The Gertboard is an add-on board designed by Gert van Loo who is also one of the hardware engineers involved in the original design of the Raspberry Pi. The board was originally sold by Farnell/Element14 in kit form but has just been re-launched as a fully assembled unit.

This may come as a disappoint to those people that wanted to solder their own boards but perhaps a relief to those that will be happy with a pre-built product.

The Gertboard plugs directly onto the Raspberry Pi GPIO header and provides a range of features and interfacing possibilities including :

• Drive powerful motors
• Detect switch presses
• Illuminate LEDs
• Drive relays.
• Detect and output analogue voltages
• Respond to external physical events

Specifications & Features

• 12 x LED indicators
• 12 x buffered I/O
• 3 x momentary push buttons
• 6 open collector drivers (50V, 0.5A)
• 18V, 2A bi-directional motor controller
• 28-pin dual in line ATmega microcontroller
• 2-channel 8 bit Digital to Analogue converter

2-channel 10 bit Analogue to Digital converter

Gertboard – Layout Diagram

The product from Farnell/Element14 contains :

• 1 Gertboard (Fully assembled)
• 10 x strap cables
• 18 x jumpers

Photos

Here are some photos I took of my Gertboard, including the Farnell packaging :

User Manual

The Gertboard User Manual is available to download from Farnell/Element14. It was created by Gert van Loo and Myra VanInwegen. It explains the features of the board, how to configure it and provides some examples to get you started.

Possible Applications

• General electronics experiments
• Robots and motor control
• Sensor monitoring
• Security systems and alarms