Raspberry Pi A, User Manual, Page: 266 / 314

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ALTHOUGH YOU CAN use the Raspberry Pi’s general-purpose input-output (GPIO) header
directly, as you learned in Chapter 13, “Learning to Hack Hardware”, a much better idea is to
use a specialist prototyping board. Prototyping boards are add-on boards designed to sit
between your project and the Raspberry Pi, and range from the relatively simple—such as
Ciseco’s Slice of Pi—to the complex and powerful Gertboard.
At their most basic, add-on boards simply provide easier access to the Raspberry Pi’s GPIO
pins. This may mean they can be connected to a breadboard easier, or are spaced further
apart and labelled to make connecting other devices simpler. Some boards include circuitry
to connect specific add-on devices, such as a small XBee wireless transceiver, and still others
provide a small surface onto which you can solder your own components to make a custom
board.
The hardware market is constantly and rapidly changing, and the Raspberry Pi Foundation
continues to encourage developers to create more add-on devices. It would be impossible to
create an exhaustive list of all the add-on boards available or planned for release in the near
future, but in this chapter, you’ll learn about three of the most common boards and how they
can be used.
Ciseco Slice of Pi
The most basic of boards, Ciseco’s Slice of Pi (see Figure 16-1) is nevertheless useful. Supplied
in kit form, Slice of Pi features a small prototyping area, a space for an XBee wireless module
and full access to the Raspberry Pi’s GPIO pins.
The compact Slice of Pi is designed to be connected directly to the GPIO headers on the top
of the Raspberry Pi, with the rest of the board covering part of the Pi’s surface—but not
extending beyond the edges of the board nor obscuring any commonly used ports. The Slice
of Pi does, however, sit over the DSI video output connector. In most cases where this
connector is used, the ribbon cable can be routed underneath the Slice of Pi board without
trouble.