Adafruit Launches BrainCraft HAT for Raspberry Pi as an All-in-One TensorFlow Lite Dev Platform
In development for a year now, the BrainCraft HAT is finally available — and it has some great design tweaks, including a cooling fan.
Adafruit has officially launched its BrainCraft HAT for the Raspberry Pi family of single-board computers to help people get started with TensorFlow Lite for Microcontrollers.
Unveiled by Adafruit last year but only now launching, the BrainCraft HAT is a HAT-standard add-on for the Raspberry Pi general-purpose input/output (GPIO) header designed to offer everything you could need for TensorFlow Lite for Microcontroller edge AI development in a compact and affordable package — from a color display to STEMMA QT ports for external hardware.
"The BrainCraft HAT has a 240×240 TFT IPS display for inference output, slots for camera connector cable for imaging projects, a 5-way joystick and button for UI input, left and right microphones, stereo headphone out, stereo 1W speaker out, three RGB DotStar LEDs, two 3-pin STEMMA connectors on PWM pins so they can drive NeoPixels or servos, and Grove/STEMMA/Qwiic I2C port," the company's official rundown explains. "This will let people build a wide range of audio/video AI projects while also allowing easy plug-in of sensors and robotics!"
"The STEMMA QT port means you can attach heat image sensors like the Panasonic Grid-EYE or MLX90640. Heat-sensitive cameras can be used as a person detector, even in the dark! An external accelerometer can be attached for gesture or vibration sensing such as machinery/industrial predictive maintenance projects."
Adafruit also has an answer for one of the biggest concerns surrounding always-on edge AI devices: privacy. A physical switch disables the audio codec on demand, meaning there's absolutely no way for the BrainCraft HAT to listen in when you don't want it to. There's even a fan on the rear side of the board, meant to keep the hot-running Raspberry Pi 4's system-on-chip cool.
The BrainCraft HAT is now available priced at $39.95, and is recommended for use with the latest Raspberry Pi 4.