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This Raspberry Pi add-on lets you control Lego robots

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Hardware

Raspberry Pi is releasing an add-on that will let you use many of its tiny, inexpensive computers to control certain Lego robot motors and sensors. The add-on is called the Build HAT (HAT stands for Hardware Attached on Top), and slotting it onto a Raspberry Pi’s GPIO pins will give you four ports that you can use to control Lego Education’s SPIKE components, which the HAT and its software are specially designed for. It’ll also connect to most other parts that use an LPF2 connector, including the components from the Lego Mindstorms robot inventor kit.

There’s also a Python library (basically a set of commands you can use to control the robot) available to go alongside the HAT, which will let you write software to control the robot parts you’ve got hooked up. Programing Lego’s SPIKE components with Python isn’t a unique selling feature from Raspberry Pi — the SPIKE kit comes with a hub that supports connecting six devices (compared to the Build HAT’s four) that can also store and run Python programs.

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LEGO Technic meets Raspberry Pi with the Build HAT

  • LEGO Technic meets Raspberry Pi with the Build HAT

    A new official Raspberry Pi expansion board is introduced today. The Built HAT provides four connectors for LEGO Technic motors and sensors from the SPIKE Portfolio, as well as an 8V DC jack to power both the Raspberry Pi and LEGO motors, sensors, LED matrix, and more.

    Designed in collaboration with LEGO Education, the Build HAT features the Raspberry Pi RP2040 dual-core ARM Cortex M0+ MCU for I/O control, and will enable more complex models benefiting from more powerful Broadcom BCM2xxx processors, as well as a Python library for easy programming.

Now you can plug Lego into your Raspberry Pi

  • Now you can plug Lego into your Raspberry Pi | ZDNet

    Raspberry Pi has announced a new collaboration with Lego, which will enable users to integrate a whole new range of sensors, motors and other special pieces into their creations.

    The project has been two years in the making, according to Raspberry Pi's program manager Richard Hayler, and takes the form of a $25 add-on board called the Build HAT (an acronym for "Hardware Attached on Top") that can connect to the computer on one end while attaching to Lego components on the other.

New Part Day: Raspberry Pi LEGO HAT

  • New Part Day: Raspberry Pi LEGO HAT

    The Raspberry Pi Foundation have been busy little bees for the last couple of years producing their own silicon, new boards and now in collaboration with the LEGO Education team a new HAT to connect to the LEGO SPIKE education platform. This new HAT board will work with every Raspberry Pi board with a 40-pin GPIO header.

A Raspberry Pi HAT for the Lego Technic fan

  • A Raspberry Pi HAT for the Lego Technic fan

    Using a Pi to process sensor readings and manage motors has been a thing since the inception of the computer, and users (including ourselves) have long made use of the General Purpose Input / Output (GPIO) pins that have been a feature of the hardware for all manner of projects.

    However, not all users are entirely happy with breadboards and jumpers. Lego, familiar to many a builder thanks to lines such as its Mindstorms range, recently introduced the Education SPIKE Prime set, aimed at the classroom.

    The set contains a wide variety of components, including motors and sensors, controllable via a rechargeable hub and tablet application. It is the latter elements that a Build HAT-equipped Pi can replace: simply plug those motor and sensor components into the Pi hardware instead.

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