Picon Zero..............................
Les Pounder, in his quest to find the ultimate platform for his robot army, may have just stumbled on the Holy Grail that will lead to our downfall.
A dedicated Pi Zero HAT that promises to power robots to a new world order, hopefully not.
Choosing the right components for a robotics project takes time and can also involve a lot of trial and error, which can ultimately cost quite a bit of wasted money. The Raspberry Pi market has seen many different kits for both robotics and physical computing but with the Picon Zero we might just see one board to rule them all.
Picon Zero has been developed by 4tronix, which has good pedigree in robotics, and with it we see the merging of a few different boards into one product. First, the Picon Zero has been designed to match the outline of the Raspberry Pi Zero, enabling a neat package. The Picon Zero will also fit on top of any 40-pin GPIO Raspberry Pi.
Picon comes with a series of inputs and outputs broken out as a series of male and female header pins. The bank of six outputs, which are labelled 0 to 5, have three-pins for each device: 5V power, Ground and Signal, and can be used to connect to servos, LEDs and even WS2812 LEDs (commonly referred to as Neopixels).
Each of these outputs can be used digitally, either on or off, or they can be used with Pulse Width Modulation (PWM), which, eg, can be used to control the brightness of an LED or control the timings of a signal. The bank of inputs follows the same physical standards as the outputs but can be used with digital inputs, such as buttons and switches as well as analogue sensors and specialist sensors, such as the DS18B20 temperature sensor.
Along the top edge of the board there are a series of female connectors, the first bank of connectors breakouts a few of the spare GPIO pins from your Raspberry Pi. This is handy if you wish to connect any other components. Just next to this bank is a special row of four pins, designed to accommodate the HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensor, commonly used to measure distance via an ultrasonic pulse in much the same manner as a parking sensor. This sensor typically finds its way into robotics projects.
Power and control
The motor controller used on the Picon Zero is a DRV8833, which is the same chip used for the Cam Jam Edukit 3. This dual-H bridge controller controls two 5V motors, via two screw terminals or two male pins, at around 2A of current and allows for a powerful robot to be built. Power for your motors can come from the Raspberry Pi 5V pins, but if this proves too much for your power supply then you can swap the supply, via a jumper, to an external USB battery pack. This is accessed by a handy micro USB connector on the underside of the board or you can wire a battery box to the VIN terminals on the right of the board. The board can also control servos. These are small motors that have a high degree of accuracy, which are commonly used for precise control projects such as pan and tilt camera setups.
All of the functionality is controlled via a Python 2/3 library and it’s really simple to use, thanks to a series of modules and functions that provide a human readable interface for the components and enabling this board to be dropped in as a replacement for multiple boards. Think of it as a Swiss Army Knife for projects.
Picon Zero is a great product that truly interprets and responds to the needs of the Raspberry Pi community. It merges the lessons learnt over many different products and projects and provides a simple, robust and compact platform for many different project types. This is a board that will soon become your go-to board to get a project done.