The Raspberry Pi computer has certainly been a huge step in the maker/hacker/hobby electronics world with some very impressive capabilities. One thing it doesn’t have, however, is a way to directly input analog signals, or a few other functions that the Data Acquistion and Control (DAAC) Hat from Adaptive Industries supplies.
In addition to analog inputs, this board includes PWM, analog, and relay output signals. The board comes with a software dashboard that allows you to use the DAAC-Hat “as soon as it is connected,” according to the product’s page.
The board connects to a Raspberry Pi 2 or 3 with a 40-pin passthrough connector, and communicates via a Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI). The board requires no external power, and still allows you access to all of your ‘Pi’s GPIO pins that aren’t used for SPI communication.
The “Hat” model is meant for the Raspberry Pi, but if you want to connect to another microcontroller, such as your favorite flavor of Arduino, check out the DAAC-100 for a very similar non-platform specific version. You can find even more information on these boards at the Adaptive Interfaces homepage.
