The Gertboard
What the heck is a Gertboard, you ask? Gert van Loo is a computer electronics engineer who was the chief architect of the Raspberry Pi PCB. Gert designed the Gertboard as a Raspberry Pi expansion board, or daughterboard, that makes it easy to detect and respond to physical (analog) events such as voltage changes, motor state changes, and the like.
The Gertboard is awesome because it saves you the work of building circuits with a breadboard. The Gertboard PCB is literally covered with useful electrical components like the following:
- Tactile buttons
- LEDs
- Motor controllers
- Digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital converters
The Gertboard and the Pi connect together directly by means of (what else?) the Pi’s GPIO header. Figure 3.6 shows you a close-up of the amazing Gertboard.
FIGURE 3.6 The Gertboard provides a truly seamless expansion experience for the Raspberry Pi.
Just wait—you get to use the Gertboard in Chapter 20.