Introducing Hat A Day! Not To Be Confused With The Real HaD Of Course…

Hat a Day

With the release of the Raspberry Pi B+ model comes a whole slew of extra GPIO connectors, a whopping 40 of them in fact — Almost double the original B model! A HAT stands for Hardware Attached on Top, and Adafruit is celebrating by trying to create a new hat, every day.

A HAT is a rectangular board measuring 65x56mm with mounting holes for the Raspberry Pi B+ and a 40 pin GPIO header. That doesn’t sound too special by itself, but two of the header pins are reserved for a special auto-configuration system that allows your Pi to have automatic GPIO and driver setup! Now we’re talking!

So far Adafruit has made a handful of prototype HATs including the Perma-proto HAT, a GPS HAT, a TFT HAT, an Arcade HAT and even a Servo HAT. But they’re looking for more! We think they’ve slipped up on the one a day record though…

We’re excited to see more integrated projects with the B+ since it’s so much more friendly for add-on hardware than the original — What kind of hardware would you like to see in HAT form? Do you like the idea of HATs?

18 thoughts on “Introducing Hat A Day! Not To Be Confused With The Real HaD Of Course…

  1. Ugh, can HaD not shill for Adafruit? They are one of the worst hypocritical, two faced and exploitive of hackers and makers. The fact that they sell Makerbot (even an adafruit ‘branded’ Makerbot!), Oracle software, and Eagle software tells you all you need to know about how truely dedicated to open and free hardware and software. They’re nothing but vile scum.

    1. Yea, and the chips you put in your open source projects should be free aswell.

      How on earth is anyone going to get food on their table and a roof over their heads if everything is free?

    2. As much as it’s good to support open platforms, spewing vitriol about Adafruit here is juuuuuuust a bit really overkill. “Vile scum”? Really?

      I don’t even think this is HaD shilling Adafruit, because there’s no specific product being sold in this post. Heck, if anything it’s promoting an open platform in the form of the HAT standard Adafruit created, enabling people to create more things with the Raspi. That enabling is what’s important here, and what’s more, I think enabling people to create carries far more importance than obstructing that creation because it doesn’t have quite the right legal jargon attached to it.

      1. The “hat” standard is straight from the Raspberry Pi Foundation, Adafruit is simply implementing it. But I agree, Adafruit is doing a good job by using it. This is the first big push that I’ve heard of creating hardware using the new standard.

        If someone makes it easier to use my RasPi for a wider range of awesomeness, that’s good enough for me.

  2. Wearable electronics beyond a wristwatch isn’t my thing, and I don’t know any youngsters who are into it to be a help to them. I’m pretty sure open source hardware/software can’t survive too much of; if it ain’t the way I think it should be it isn’t open source. Steel that simply hardened can break under a load. Steel that’s treated to be flexible and tough works for the long term.

    1. Err.. what? You do realize this isn’t talking about actual headwear for humans, right? HAT is just a marketing acronym thought up by someone who probably considers themself a lot more clever than they really are.

  3. Me? I’m sick and tired of these cutesy names for add-on boards. Shields, Capes, Plates, HATs, etc. Seriously, just stop it. Cards, accessories, or add-on boards will do just fine. We don’t need a new name for the same damn thing every time someone comes out with a new dev board.

    1. Agreed. Perhaps the most jarring thing about reading this article was seeing the word ‘hat’ yelled at me in all caps repeatedly. Call it an expansion board or daughter-board or anything else actually descriptive of its functionality, just stop using this stupid ‘HAT’ moniker.

    1. CNC machines really are more suited to an RTOS environment. I would recommend building a controller and communicating with it via serial to your RasPi. RAMPS is a classic example of this, but you could easily build one that isn’t 3 inches thick and just use an AVR on a custom PCB.

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