RedBoard+

Name: RedBoard+
SKU: 18228
Price: 44.00 USD
Availability: InStock
Rating: 5.00 (3 reviews)

(3 Reviews)

Fully featured robotics add on board (pHat) for the Raspberry Pi.

Designed by RedRobotics in United Kingdom

2019-10-13T23:05:55.054Z-IMG_20190514_093318.jpg

2019-10-13T21:00:15.858Z-Redboard_image_V0-3_boarder.png

2019-10-13T21:00:15.858Z-Redboard_image_text_V0-3.png

2019-10-13T23:05:55.054Z-IMG_20190313_224137.jpg

Buy with confidence.

Our Tindie Guarantee protects your purchase from fraud. Learn More

Fully featured robotics add on board (pHat) for the Raspberry Pi.

What is it? An easy to use robotics controller with advanced features for the Raspberry Pi. Not compatible with Raspberry Pi 5. Why did you make it? There wasn't a board available with all the featur…

What is it?

An easy to use robotics controller with advanced features for the Raspberry Pi.
Not compatible with Raspberry Pi 5.

Why did you make it?

There wasn't a board available with all the features I wanted.

What makes it special?

Hardware:

7 - 24 Volt battery input with reverse polarity protection.
5.2 Volt, 3 Amp - on board high efficiency power supply (powers the RPi and additional electronics).
3.3 Volt 800mA Regulator.
2 X 6 Amp H-Bridges. For controlling 2 (or sets of 2) DC motors, with fully proportional speed control.
4 Channel 5 Volt level shifter for driving Neopixels, DotStars or other 5v electronics.
4 Channel analogue to digital converter (one channel is reserved for battery monitoring).
RGB LED.
Directly drives up to 12 hobby servos (with separate power input for large 'robot' servos).
Reset/Shutdown/User programmable switch (launch user programs, or safely shutdown your RPi).
Power switch.
4 X I2C breakout headers.
Serial - RX & TX headers.
Plenty of Ground and Power pins.

Software:

There is a pre-configured SD Image available for download.
This has a number of built in scripts which add functionality to the board.
E.g. Flashing the IP address on the RGB LED. Youtube Link
Showing the battery level on the RGB LED.
Safely shutting down the RPi when the battery is low.

There is a Python library to accompany the RedBoard+.
This adds simple commands to control all the features of the board.
E.g. to control a motor in Python - simply import the redboard library:

import redboard

Then to drive motor 1 at half speed forward:

redboard.M1(50)

Or full speed backwards:

redboard.M1(-100)

That's it!

Lots more info here: RedBoard+ GitHub page

There are also plenty of code examples for controlling robots with a PC keyboard or Gamepads as well as a quick start guide to controlling a robot.

Demo Video:
More RC car than Robot!

No country selected, please select your country to see shipping options.

Change Destination Country:

Quantity	Price
1	$44.00
2+	$40.00

Review Breakdown

Average Ratings

Product: (5.00)

Documentation: (5.00)

Shipping: (5.00)

Communication: (5.00)

Carl | March 21, 2021

A good buy.

A good buy. Does what it says on the tin.

Pity more manufacturers don't know about it. I'm using the Redboard+ as my primary i/o device and have to control third party devices via that, eg. GrovePi LED bar display. They expect you to use their shield, but I can't put that on top of the Redboard!

Otherwise a brilliant concept.

Lewis | July 24, 2020

A great product

I am very impressed with the redboard. It fuctions well and is easy to use. The documentation is clear and helpful.

Brian | Jan. 6, 2020

Well thought out with useful features

Mini review of the Red Robotics Redboard+
The Redboard+ is a hat sized motor driver that packs a lot of features into the hat format. They include
• Built in BEC only need a single power source required to driver the motors and Raspberry Pi.
• The really useful header breaks out Physical pins 1 to 10, that’s 5v, ground, serial, i2c, and GPIO 4.
• Up to 6A per channel,
• Battery voltage monitoring
• 4 channel ADC one channel is dedicated to monitoring the battery voltage.
• 4 5V outputs
• Spare GPIO pins are broken out to 3 pin headers with 5V and GND.
• 3 x i2c headers
• On broad RGB LED.
• Power switch
• Programmable button
Adding the daughterboard adds the following features
• OLED 128 x 32 SSD1306 display
• Serial
• i2c header for an i2c keyboard
Heading to the Redboard page on GitHub, the readme is a great introduction to the Redboard+ with clear instructions how to install the required libraries and example code plus setup services for monitoring the battery and the user defined button. Neil has also supplied a pre-built image for you to flash to a SD card. Tried both methods and was able to get a robot up and running in a few minutes. Using a Pi Hut controller Sherpe respond well to input. The OLED screen displays your robot IP address if connected to wifi network and the voltage of the battery. The user define switch as been setup to display the IP address of your robot, when held in for a few seconds will reboot your robot and if held for longer will turn off your robot.
In conclusion
the Red Robotics Redboard+ is a good value robot controller with great features and an easy to use Python library with a well written guide how to setup your Raspberry Pi with example code to get you started. I was so impressed with the Redboard+ that I treated Bill my eldest son aka @jedifodder on Twitter to an early Christmas present