What is it?

Pi Droid Alpha is a robot controller for the Raspberry Pi designed for education.

Photo 1: PiDroidAlpha shown after it is assembled

Photo 2: PiDroidAlpha kit of parts (what you get)

Photo 3: Different angle showing PiDroidAlpha after it is assembled

Photo 4: Showing an example of a PiDroidAlpha based robot (work in progress, not included)

PiDroidAlpha is an all-in-one solution with:

• L293D dual h-bridge motor driver
• MCP3008 eight channel 10 bit analog to digital converter
• MCP23S17 sixteen channel digital I/O expander to your Raspberry Pi

to the Raspberry Pi - everything you need (other than the Pi) to build an educational robot!

Note: Pi Droid Alpha is sold in unassembled kit form. Photo above shows an assembled Pi Droid Alpha for illustration purposes

Pi Droid Alpha is for all current Raspberry Pi Models!

• Raspberry Pi 2 Model B
• Raspberry Pi Zero
• Raspberry Pi Model A
• Raspberry Pi Model B
• Raspberry Pi Model A+
• Raspberry Pi Model B+

PiDroidAlpha can be used with existing popular Raspberry Pi libraries such as

• pigpio (recommended)
• servoblaster
• wiringPi

I have also made a RoboPi API compatible Python library, so you will be able to use the same Python source code for both PiDroidAlpha and RoboPi based robots (with very few limitations)

Why did you make it?

I wrote an article for the January 2014 issue of Servo showing how to build a simple Raspberry Pi based robot by adding an inexpensive motor driver and a simple circuit for servo control (on a prototyping board).

Later, I designed PiDroidAlpha and RoboPi, and I released RoboPi first due to an issue with the first run of PiDroidAlpha printed circuit boards.

Teachers loved RoboPi, but asked for a cheaper board that required less soldering and also had a motor driver on-board.

What makes it special?

PiDroidAlpha is designed specifically for the educational market, and it is the only board you need to add to a Raspberry Pi for smaller educational robots.

There is no need to have a separate servo controller board, separate analog to digital converter board, and separate motor driver - and no birds nest of wires to connect it all to your Raspberry Pi!

Students (and hobbyists) will get a feeling of accomplishment from soldering their own controller kit.

I also have a support forum for PiDroidAlpha at http://forums.mikronauts.com