Raspberry Pi Zero Wifi Would love a motor Controller hat

Support Product suggestions
1

I would love for a Motor Controller HAT kit for the Raspberry Pi Zero WIFI iteration, to work with your Zumo Chasis.
Cheers… would be great with camera for Zero.

1 Like
2

Hi.

Thank you for the suggestion. We moved your post to the product suggestions section of our forum since it seemed more appropriate.

We already have a few controllers and motor drivers that would probably work with the Raspberry Pi Zero W, like our DRV8835 Dual Motor Driver Kit for Raspberry Pi and our A-Star 32U4 Robot Controller SV with Raspberry Pi Bridge. You can see all the supporting products we have for the Raspberry Pi on our Raspberry Pi category page.

You might also be interested in our Romi chassis and Romi 32U4 Control Board, which has a built-in interface for a Raspberry Pi.

Are there some specific features you are looking for that our existing boards do not have?

-Claire

3

Thank you for your speedy response. No I just was unable to determine if
the DRV8835 would work with the New Pi Zero W. Thanks this helps.
Sincerely,
William Jordan

4

Related question. If I wanted to drive a Zumo with all the sensors with a Raspberry Pi Zero to add processing power and a camera would it make sense to buy the complete integrated Zumo with ATmega32U4 microcontroller and then mount the RPi Zero on top? If so, how would the RPi communicate with the ATmega32U4 to give it instructions? Please advise if this does not makes sense - I’m a Noobie to robots and pololu products.

Or is the Explorer pHAT the way to go and would I be able to connect all the sensors on the Zumo?

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Hi, workless.

It is possible to control a Zumo 32U4 Robot and all of its sensors from a Raspberry Pi. We do not have any examples made exactly for that, but the examples in our Raspberry Pi slave library for Arduino for both the A-Star Robot Controller and Romi should be fairly similar to what you would need to do with your code. Those libraries use I2C for communicate between the RPi and ATmega32U4.

Also, we do not have any specific provisions on the Zumo for physically mounting a Raspberry Pi.

More generally, if you are new to robotics, I recommend getting a Zumo and spending some time getting familiar with it and programming it before trying to add something like a Raspberry Pi. Then you might try out just the RPi with no Zumo, and once you are comfortable with both those separately, you can put them together.

-Claire

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Hi Claire. Good advice. Thanks. I am strong on Raspberry Pi and Python but the robotics is all new so I think I will follow your suggestion and just buy the integrated Zumo 32U4 first. But I am still curious, can I eventually do away with the ATmega32U4 and drive the motors and read from the sensors directly with an RPi and a motor controller hat or does it make sense to keep the ATmega32U4 as a ‘slave’ to the RPi. I will look into I2C communications as well, thanks.