RaspUnderControl

About this project

Raspberry Pi is a great board, you can use to learn hardware and software or for playing your favourite retrogame (which I like very much!). It's your best friend in today's world of microcomputers.

I designed the raspundercontrol board because I think the only lack in many single board computers is the famous and glorious power button like a home computer. If you plan to use your RPi in a standalone project, RaspUnderControl is the perfect solution.

I started to design and test the circuit a few months ago - lots of beer and fun during these test nights.

The board uses an ATTiny85 chip for powering and interacting with the RPi. The chip is programmed with Arduino IDE. you can hack and edit all the code for your needs. For example, you can change timing pressure of the button for reset function, or assign double-click to another function on RPi.

I tested my idea with my best friend, breadboard, and my girlfriend board, Arduino.

I started to think about the best way for powering the RPi and made a lot of tests with various micro relays. But I realized that the best way for my project is to use a MOSFET as a relay.

With this solution, I keep the RaspUnderControl board tiny enough to connect to the RPi, and you can continue to use your favorite RPi enclosure.

With RaspUnderControl you have a simple and easy power/reboot button, which is very useful if you plan to use your RPi in a standalone project.

Short press is power off, long press is reboot. As an update, you can now also control your board with a remote. Simple.

Raspundercontrol simply connects to the RPi GPIO headers - no wire or other stuff:

The board takes power from its micro USB plug or from the +5V external power supply jumper.

A short script written in Python interacts with the RaspUnderControl board. 2 GPIO are used: GPIO17 for the watchdog and GPIO18 for shutdown/reboot command.

The on-board LED has just 3 states:

• Fast Blink: Power Up the RPi or reboot state

• Slow Blink: Power off state

• Fixed: All OK and you can use your RPi

As an update, I released the out-of-the-box version, which is useful if you don't have free space on RPI GPIO header.

Here's the specs:

• MicroUSB input

• Standard USB plug output that provides power to your RPi through a simple USB cable

• 6 pins header that provide external power supply, external power button & 2 last pins to interact with your RPi

• 2 LED, power LED like the inbox version and another LED for supply input power

Because this board is not directly connected to the GPIO header, you can reassign the standard GPIO17 and GPIO18 to what you want.

Now the RaspUnderContro board comes with an infrared receiver feature. You can control your RPI by a remote. Check the Update. If the project gets funded, you can choose between the inbox version or the out-of-the-box version - same price.

My main goal is to ensure that the RaspUnderControl board is cheap and tiny enough to be used in all Raspberry Pi projects. Once the campaign is over, I ensure the RaspUnderControl board will be made available by online hardware retailers.

Open Source Hardware and Software

If the project gets funded, all the schematic, software and anything you need to build or hack your RaspUnderControl board will be released.

Stretch Goals:

• 4K Euros: Everyone can choose the LED color (RED, BLUE, GREEN, YELLOW and WHITE).

• 10K Euros: All the boards are shipped with a 5V 2A micro USB power supply.

• 15K Euros: Everyone can choose the color of the board (RED, BLUE, GREEN, BLACK, WHITE, YELLOW).

Pledges Info:

All the pledges starting from 17 euros have 1 remote per board. Get your RaspUnderControl today, and thank you to all!