Gertbot is here!

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been whetting your appetite for something new from Gert. How is Gert performing this magic? He’s built a new add-on for your Raspberry Pi: the GertBot. GertBot is a motor controller and power management board, which you can buy today from Farnell or from The Pi Hut. What makes it so special? Gert has put an ARM cortex-M3 processor on board, which handles all the real-time requirements, so the Pi’s processor is left free to get on with other things – this means you only need to send high-level commands to the GertBot, and the board handles all the rest for you. This is a powerful piece of kit. While Gert expects most of you to use it for driving motors and building robots, he notes that you can also use it to drive other things: using all three RGB channels, for example, your Pi with the GertBot attached can operate 30,000 led lights. Which should be enough for anybody. And, of course, there’s the ability to generate DCC signals, which will make model train enthusiasts pink-cheeked and happy. Gert says: It has four full H-bridges which can drive 2.5A each. Thus one board can control four brushed motors or two stepper motors. If that is not enough you can cascade up to four board which gives you sixteen brushed motors or eight stepper motors or any combination in between. Additionally the board can control model trains as it supports the DCC standard. As to software: it comes with a debug and development GUI, C-drivers, Python drivers, and example code showing how to use the drivers, all available in source code. Hop over to www.gertbot.com where you can download all the code and can also see a number of videos demonstrating the board's capabilities. The board is distributed by Farnell and the Pi-hut. Gert sits just across the room from me, where he plays with trains and stepper motors. When I loaded this video this morning, everybody looked to see if he was hiding under my desk. Over to Gert, who will show you how to set up GertBot in three minutes from a standing start. Example programs, utilities, and more are all available at the GertBot site. As with all Gertenproducts, there’s a full and detailed user manual available for download too. If you can’t get enough of Gert’s mellifluous Dutch tones, you’ll also find more example video. Thinking of buying one? What would you use it for?

URL: http://www.raspberrypi.org/gertbot-is-here/