Bare Conductive Pi Cap

2016-09-06 | By Maker.io Staff

Raspberry Pi

If you are already a big fan of the Bare Conductive Touch Board then you will love the Pi Cap. The Pi Cap was specifically designed for the Raspberry Pi Zero, which is a small micro version of the Raspberry Pi. The Pi Cap not only works with the Pi Zero but any previous version of the Raspberry Pi. Bare Conductive have done away worth the Arduino powered board but rather use the Raspberry Pi hardware to power the Pi Cap. 

The Pi Cap adds capacitive touch, distance sensing and audio output to a Raspberry Pi. The computing power of the Raspberry Pi and the physical power of the Pi Cap will give makers and educators a huge potential for interactive projects, music machines or even interactive museum guides. You can easily turn your Raspberry Pi into a music machine with polyphonic sample playback and modulation.

The Pi Cap is currently still under development but will soon be available to the public.

Pi Cap used in conjunction with a Raspberry Pi, will bring the following features to your projects:

• Capacitive Sensing hardware and software - The Pi Cap uses the same robust capacitive sensing hardware as the Touch Board. It also includes the powerful libraries so that you can control and tune your sensors to your liking.
• Connect your Pi to anything - You’ll notice that the Pi Cap has the same 12 electrodes along the top edge as the Touch Board. That means you can connect with Electric Paint, crocodile clips, M3 hardware or solder.
• Audio Output - You can plug in your headphones for high quality audio output on the Raspberry Pi Zero, or any model of Pi.
• A Music Machine - The Pi Cap will be useful for tons of projects, but out of the box it’s a music machine. Bare Conductive are also working on a Raspberry Pi build that will turn your Zero into a polyphonic sampler the first time you boot it up.
• RGB Status LED - The Pi Cap has an RGB status LED to let you know that its booting up, whether its recorded a touch and more.  Plus, it shines neatly through one of the mounting holes in the Zero.
• GPIO Breakouts – Just to the right of the board is a nice little prototyping area for project expansion. Maybe you want to put down a pair of rotary encoders for your music machine.
• Cross-Pi Compatibility – Pi Cap not only works on the Pi Zero but is also compatible with all previous versions of the Raspberry Pi.

Summary

The Pi Cap is a much welcomed introduction with the Touch board already priced at £49.99 it is somewhat overpriced for what it is. Bare Conductive have taken on some feedback from resellers and makers alike and have produced a really nice board which features all the originally features of the touch board but with the Raspberry Pi integration. I would expect this board to retail at around half the price of the touch board.

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Arduino | 3D Printing | Raspberry Pi