There are already several expansion boards for the Raspberry Pi such as the Gertboard or RaspiComm, but none of them originated from China. Onebir spotted a new expansion board from a Chinese supplier on Aliexpress that’s available for $25 including shipping.
There’s no description on the seller website, the seller provided us some details in Chinese. With Google translate help, the key features of the board(s) can be summarized as follows:
- 3.3V / 5V SPI interface
- 3.3V / 5V I2C interface
- Opto-isolator for GPIOs supporting 8-channel 50V/600mA to control motors, drive LEDs, etc…
- Power LED (The pictures are crap, but I can’t see any LEDs on the boards)
- External power fuse to protect the expansion board and the Raspberry Pi.
The features in Chinese are shown below in case something was lost in translation:
1.
2.3.3VSPI5V SPIP133.3V
3.3.3VI2C5V I2CP133.3V
4.GPIO850V600mALED
5.LED
6.
I’m not even sure this “expansion kit” includes the 2 boards pictured above, and questions about software support remained unanswered. Beyond the total lack of information, although the seller has good ratings he is relatively new, so only people willing to risk $25 should give it a try.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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I think the numbers (2x, 3x etc) are just for counting. ie there’s just one SPI etc. I just contacted the seller; he should post some more info here. (Probly in Chinese, but we can have a stab at it :p )
That’s annoying, the expansion board is gone now. I wonder if it’s because they used Raspberry Pi logo without authorization on their boards…
It’s back. But shipping is a bit more…
@onebir
It seems nobody ordered. It should be more or less expected since the page seriously lacks information both for hardware description and software support.
Still available:
http://www.aliexpress.com/item//1296768724.html
& a few more apparently Chinese designed expansion boards have sprung up:
“DVK511”: http://www.aliexpress.com/item//1522186900.html
“RS232+GPIO”：http://www.aliexpress.com/item//1296771647.html