Explorer HAT Pro

by Pimoroni

Explorer HAT Pro adds a lot of useful tools to your Raspberry Pi.

It has digital inputs and outputs, capacitive touch pads, croc. clip compatible pads, coloured LEDs, analog inputs, motor drivers, and a mini breadboard for prototyping your projects

Great for little robots, games, science experiments, exploring small electronic circuits, and interacting with your Pi.

We've put together a handy little Explorer HAT Pro parts kit with everything you need to get started building circuits including LEDs, dials, a buzzer, and even a temperature sensor! Explorer HAT Pro also goes great with our no-soldering-required micro metal gearmotors.

Features

  • Four buffered 5V tolerant inputs (perfect for Arduino compatibility)
  • Four powered 5V outputs (up to 500mA total across all four channels)
  • Four capacitive touch pads (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4)
  • Four capacitive crocodile clip pads (labelled 5, 6, 7, 8)
  • Four coloured LEDs (red, green, blue, and yellow)
  • Four analog inputs
  • Two H-bridge motor drivers (up to 200mA per channel; soft PWM control)
  • A heap of useful (unprotected) 3v3 goodies from the GPIO
  • A mini breadboard on top!
  • Explorer HAT Pro pinout
  • Compatible with all 40-pin header Raspberry Pi models
  • Python library
  • Comes fully assembled

Software

We've made it super-quick to get to grips with Explorer HAT Pro with our Python library, including a bunch of examples to show off all of Explorer HAT Pro's functions.

Notes

  • The inputs use a 5-channel buffer that will accept anything from 2V-5V as logic high
  • Mini breadboard has 170 points, 17x5 per half of the breadboard
  • Due to exciting global electronic parts shortages, some Explorer Hat Pros manufactured in 2021 have an ADS1115 ADC instead of the usual ADS1015. Our Python libraries have been updated to automatically detect and adjust for this chip change.

18 customer reviews

6 months ago
I'm absolutely thrilled with this e-ink display! Despite not being a professional programmer, setting it up was surprisingly straightforward using the libraries provided on GitHub. I'm using it to monitor my VPN/ LAN and AdBlock stats etc.- it's perfect for this kind of monitoring.
by Guido about Inky wHAT - Large e-Ink Display via REVIEWS.io
7 months ago
Very clear epd, fast update of the screen, and if you send data to it as if it's the Black/White/Red version it also has a nice grey (modding the dither python example to include grey instead of red also works!)
by Anonymous about Inky wHAT - Large e-Ink Display via REVIEWS.io
3 years ago
Really cool display, but also the software and documentation that exists to support building projects with it makes it much more approachable than you might expect. Also excellent quality and really nice packaging.
by Samuel about Inky wHAT - Large e-Ink Display via REVIEWS.io
3 years ago
A really fun piece of tech! Very easy to use. Note that the yellow color is more gold/sand colored in real life (but still pretty!).
by Anonymous about Inky wHAT - Large e-Ink Display via REVIEWS.io
3 years ago
Very easy to get up and running - I used it to provide a passive display of server metrics with face inspired by Gerty from the film "Moon"! Pictured is its "mild concern" face. When it frowns, I know action may be required! It's perfect for my use case.
by Paul about Inky wHAT - Large e-Ink Display via REVIEWS.io
3 years ago
The product is great but the tutorial is not updated up-to-date. You should follow the instructions in the official github repo, not in the tutorial (it didn't work for me even with a brand new raspberry pi)
by Jeeyoon about Inky wHAT - Large e-Ink Display via REVIEWS.io
4 years ago
Great display. As the others in inky range, it would benefit from built-in buttons and mounting holes or at least some kind custom of frame/case.
by guy about Inky wHAT - Large e-Ink Display via REVIEWS.io
4 years ago
This was a great project. A few issues with the install using RP using the pimoroni instructions, ended up using pip and it installed without error.
by Matthew about Inky wHAT - Large e-Ink Display via REVIEWS.io
5 years ago
This is a very nice display for battery-based projects. All other projects get better displays (more resolution, more colors, touch) for the same price. The connector for the Pi on the back is useful, as are the additional pins available. A perfect fit is the adafruit enable-timer button. This will turn on your Pi every two hours for an update of the display. Connect the done-pin of the button to GPIO4 and add the gpio-poweroff overlay to the /boot/config.txt (using this pin).
by Bernhard about Inky wHAT - Large e-Ink Display via REVIEWS.io
5 years ago
Great display, very readable and super easy to install since it comes all assembled. The python library provides great resources to get you started, one thing to point out though is the long refresh time - a couple of seconds for black/white and even more if you use yellow. That is what the type of display allows, so it is to be expected.
by Jan about Inky wHAT - Large e-Ink Display via REVIEWS.io
6 years ago
Great display. Easy to install just connect to the gpio pins of the raspberry pi and install the libraries using the script on the pimoroni web page. I’m using mine for my Amateur Radio pi setup and it works great!
by Mark about Inky wHAT - Large e-Ink Display via REVIEWS.io
6 years ago
This is such a fun product, and comes with useful example code, but needs a little update: on the Pi4, it was erroring until I discovered I had to enable 'I2C' (in Preferences-> Rasberry Pi Configuration). Hardware wise, it is a super crisp display. Everything arrived really quickly and was perfect!
by Sean about Inky wHAT - Large e-Ink Display via REVIEWS.io
6 years ago
Gorgeous display. I made a BTC ticker with the red version (now I'm thinking the yellow would have been more appropriate...). You can see result in this video: https://youtu.be/51UYrKa5JwU Also the 3D model for the case: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3694748
by gilemon about Inky wHAT - Large e-Ink Display via REVIEWS.io
6 years ago
Very easy to build (it's just plug and play). The downfall is that the screen takes quite some time to change, like 10seconds, which will make you think about what kind of information (and refresh rate) you want to use it for.
by Anonymous about Inky wHAT - Large e-Ink Display via REVIEWS.io
6 years ago
A really great eInk display, It updates relatively fast and the API is nicely written and easy to get to grips with. I really like the addition of the risers and anchor points on the back of the display as it is a really nice way to affix a raspberry pi. The extra ports on the bottom are quite handy too fi you're thinking about adding a few extra sensors to your build once the display is on.
by James about Inky wHAT - Large e-Ink Display via REVIEWS.io
6 years ago
I wanted something bigger than Inky pHAT, so when I saw new Inky I bought it immediately. The display is great, so is the visibility of the screen. Demo code shows how to draw dithered photos, which is great. I used it my weather forecast script. Results are excellent. However, the refresh rate is slow. The whole process of drawing new screen lasts about 40 seconds (demo script + 400x300 png, pi zero w), but the flickering part is just 10 seconds. So for the projects with a few redraws per hour/day, it is perfect. Otherwise, it is way too slow. Anyway, I'm really happy that I have it.
by tib about Inky wHAT - Large e-Ink Display via REVIEWS.io

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