The Wombat board helps you create electronic projects with to your Raspberry Pi, whether you're designing a new product or just playing.

It's all about prototyping - taking an idea and seeing what you can do with it!

What is it?

It provides useful facilities for building your creations, including:

• all of the Raspberry Pi's GPIO pins are made easily accessible and clearly labelled
• 8 x analog inputs
• USB serial console and power connection
• a large solderless breadboard that doesn't limit you to small, simple projects
• 2 x pushbuttons, 4 x LEDs and a trimpot
• all on a convenient, sturdy platform supported by a set of six rubber feet that is really helpful when working on a design or playing around with ideas.

Why did you make it?

I like to build electronic circuits that connect to the Raspberry Pi, but the prototyping solutions I'd found simply weren't suitable for serious design work. They'd typically consist of a too-small breadboard mounted above the Pi (a "hat"), or else be a cable for connection to a larger breadboard - taking some of the valuable breadboard space while doing nothing to provide extra power or useful facilities such as LEDs and switches. So I designed something that I'd find genuinely useful for myself - and hopefully for others.

Then I thought about what else is the Raspberry Pi lacking, that I'd find useful when developing? How about analog inputs? And a USB serial interface? And being able to power the board from USB, while also using it for comms? So I added those features...

What makes it special?

One of the challenges with building circuits that work with a Raspberry Pi is that, although its GPIO pins use 3.3 V logic, it can only supply up to 50 mA at 3.3 V, which may not be enough to power your circuit. The Wombat board helps to overcome this limitation by including a 3.3 V power supply that can supply up to 500 mA.

And wouldn't it be nice to be able to connect to the Raspberry Pi's serial console via USB? You could then log in and use it without a network connection, configure the network (including WiFi), find out what IP address its using, or simply watch the messages scroll past while it boots. And wouldn't it be nice to be able to use that USB connection to also power your Raspberry Pi? The Wombat board makes of that possible by providing a micro USB port and a genuine FTDI serial to USB bridge that not only provides access to the Raspberry Pi's serial console but can power the Raspberry Pi and Wombat board as well.

Or not - each of the Wombat board's functions can easily be disabled if your project doesn't need it.

It's compatible with every model of Raspberry Pi.

See the Kickstarter video here

And Average Man vs Raspberry Pi's product review here

Features

• All 40 Raspberry Pi (2, A+ or B+) GPIO pins broken out to a clearly labelled and easily accessible 40-pin header
• Onboard 3.3 V voltage regulator, supplying up to 500 mA to your circuit
• 8 x 10-bit analog inputs, via an analog-to-digital converter (MCP3008) connected to the Raspberry Pi's SPI bus
• All signals conveniently made available alongside a large solderless breadboard, for convenient custom circuit development
• 2 x pushbuttons to use as digital inputs
• 4 x LEDs to use as digital outputs
• 1 x potentiometer to use as a basic analog input
• All onboard I/O devices are clearly labelled with both "BCM" and "Board" numbering schemes
• USB to serial bridge (genuine FTDI FT232), connecting the Raspberry Pi's serial pins to a standard micro USB port
• Able to power the Raspberry Pi via the console USB port - just one standard micro USB cable providing power and connectivity!
• All onboard devices can be disconnected or disabled via jumpers - if you don't need a facility, simply take it out of circuit
• 6 x rubber feet (already installed)

What's included?

The Wombat board is supplied fully built and comes with:

• a 40-pin IDC cable to connect it to your Raspberry Pi
• extra components including an RGB LED, a temperature sensor and a photocell for use with the example projects
• a small set of breadboard jumper wires to get you started
• a comprehensive manual, including schematics
• a Python module for using the board's features, including the analog inputs, from your Python programs - fully documented and with example code provided
• introductory projects, including a temperature-controlled colour-changing LED, all fully documented with source code provided