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THE 10 BEST RASPBERRY PI HATS
THE
10 BEST
RASPBERRY PI HATS
Your Raspberry Pi looks a lot cooler wearing a HAT, and it becomes more
functional too. Here are the 10 best HATs for the Raspberry Pi
B
eing able to pull off a good
hat is a great life skill, and
it’s one the Raspberry Pi
has owned for a couple of years
now. Putting a HAT (Hardware
Attached on Top) device on your
Raspberry Pi makes it more
functional, more powerful, and
more dapper.
HATs are a type of
accessory for the
Raspberry Pi,
designed to be
easy to set up and
easy to use. There
are HATs for all kinds of
occasions: you can buy HATs for
sensing, prototyping, displaying
information, controlling robots,
and much more. A HAT can make
your Raspberry Pi experience much
more fun because it enables you to
get on with building your project
without having to worry about
whether your hardware will work.
HATs are also designed to sit
on top of the Raspberry Pi (Model
A+, B+, or 2), plugging into its
GPIO header, with optional extra
attachment via the four mounting
holes. The HAT sits on top of the
Raspberry Pi, hence the name.
You can’t just put any old board
on top of a Pi and call it a ‘HAT’,
though. HATs have to meet a set
of rigorous standards laid down by
the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
As well as fitting on top of the
Raspberry Pi, a HAT has to work
seamlessly. The idea behind a HAT
is that your Pi should be able to
detect when one is attached.
Other accessories typically
require you to follow detailed
instructions to install drivers and
get the hardware up and running;
70 February 2016
raspberrypi.org/magpi