Raspberry Pi has been at the heart of countless projects, but it’s the HATs that are the silent heroes. The right combination of hardware can open up all kinds of functionality. That’s why the Quad Opto-TRIAC HAT should be on your radar.
This Raspberry Pi HAT includes 4 optocoupled TRIACs, allowing you to drive things like light bulbs, AC motors, fans, grow lamps, or anything else you need. Typically, HATS like this have a 24C32 EEPROM that auto-configures the RPi GPIO ports at boot time, but the TRIAC is a solid state device.
This allows it to turn on and off hundreds of times per second without any wear to the memory. The board also includes opto-isolators, which provide full isolation between both the DC and AC stages.
Beginners can quickly get started by writing 1 or 0 to the corresponding GPIO port to turn the AC channel on or off accordingly. For advanced users, open source drivers are available on GitHub.
An important thing to remember here is that improper mounting can lead to serious damage or injury. Always be safe when you’re working with electricity.
