PIS IN SPACE!

The Sense HAT is packed with sensors for temperature, humidity, acceleration, orientation and air pressure. And we have a great RGB LED matrix and a joystick that can be used in our projects. To control the Sense HAT we used Python, but we can also use Scratch and NODE-RED. Sense HAT was developed alongside a project called Astropi which saw two Raspberry Pi B+ boards being sent to the International Space Station. These two Pis had their own Sense HAT boards, official Pi cameras and a custom aluminium case designed to protect and cool the Pis in space. Projects written by children across the world were run on those two Raspberry Pis and that project still exists today and you can take part via https://astro-pi.org.

The power of Sense HAT lies in its simplicity and flexibility. In our time working with the Raspberry Pi Foundation for its Picademy training courses we used the Sense HAT to control robots via the joystick and accelerometer, and one bright spark created a Minecraft world that would change as the temperature changed. A cold room produced snow across the realm. Sense HAT retails for around £30 and while this is quite expensive for a HAT, you will get plenty of use out of this great board.