This week, modders and devs all around the world began receiving their Gertboard expansion boards for the Raspberry Pi. Essentially, the Gertboard is a mini-accessory board that allows users to interface their Pi with all sorts of other devices – allowing programs running on the Raspberry to open doors, lift items, power robotics and more.
The board arrives with both two manuals – an assembly and user – to help devs realize the full potential of their devices. As expected, the Gertboard is packaged as kit rather than being preassembled, so please note there are some definite DIY skills needed.
“If you want to use your Raspberry Pi to drive motors to open doors, lift things, or power robotics; if you want to sense temperature and switch devices on and off; if you want to flash lights; or if you want to learn about electronics from scratch, then Gertboard is for you,” Raspberry Foundation Liz Upton explained in a blog post.
As you may recall, the Gertboard experienced a delay due to a shortage of some hard to come by components. If you haven’t ordered a Gertboard just yet, well, you may have to wait just a while longer, as it seems like the device is out of stock yet again.
In related Raspberry Pi news, the foundation also offered up some details on how users can tell if they have the original version of the Raspberry Pi with 256 MB of RAM, or if they are running the new version with 512 MB RAM. The easy way would be to say if you have had your device for more than about a month you have 256 MB of RAM. However, you can also locate the long string of letters and numbers underneath the Samsung name on the RAM chip in the middle of the board (see picture below).
Somewhere in that stream will be “2G” or “4G.” If you see “4G” meaning four Gbits, you have 512 MB version, the “2G” string means you have the 256 MB version.
