Raspberry Pi Hacktop

Raspberry Pi Hacktop – a convenient development environment for the RPi

When experimenting with the Raspberry Pi one wishes to have the essential stuff handy: a breadboard, a USB hub, a speaker, a (debug) monitor, keyboard and mouse, WiFi, different supply voltages, and maybe even battery power. An ON/OFF switch would be nice as well.

So why bother: simply attach all the stuff you need to a compact piece of plywood. The 5V for the Pi are supplied by a buck regulator (max. 3A ), whose input voltage goes directly to the mini AV-mini monitor, which makes a sufficient and cheap screen for many purposes, when you adapt the resolution to make things readable. A separate linear regulator makes 3,3V @ 1A on the other breadboard rail in case you need them. Now you can use power supplies and batteries over a wide voltage range (I think the monitor as well as the LM2596 can take quite high input voltages, even above 15V).

Now you have everything handy, you can develop your RPi projects without having severe chaos on your desktop…

Raspberry Pi Hacktop

RPi Hacktop with Keyboard

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