SB Components' Pico Sense HAT Brings Environmental, Air Quality Sensing to the Raspberry Pi Pico
Not to be confused with the Raspberry Pi Sense HAT, the Pico Sense HAT focuses on environmental sensing — and comes with a free Pico!
Embedded technology specialist SB Components has launched a crowdfunding campaign for a Raspberry Pi Pico add-on, which offers environmental sensing and a neat on-board display — and it comes complete with a free Raspberry Pi Pico to get you started.
"Pico Sense HAT is designed for environment monitoring with four sensors to measure temperature, air quality, humidity, [and] color," SB Components' Ravinder Singh explains of his design, which sits atop a Raspberry Pi Pico or pin-compatible microcontroller. "It would make things better for the user to create a safe environment for our future generation."
Before taking a look at the features, though, it's necessary to clear up some potential confusion: The Pico Sense HAT is not related to the Raspberry Pi Sense HAT, an add-on for the Raspberry Pi range of single-board computers which offers an RGB LED matrix, joystick, and inertial measurement unit. It's also not technically speaking a HAT, or Hardware Attached on Top, a standard which specifically means Raspberry Pi add-ons with on-board EEPROM for auto-configuration.
With that out of the way, the Pico Sense HAT includes four key sensors: An SHT31-DIS-B CMOS-based humidity and temperature sensor; an SGP40 volatile organic compound (VOC) air quality sensor; a BME280 temperature, humidity, and pressure sensor; and a TCS34725 light and color sensor. On top of this is a small color LCD panel, designed to provide local feedback of the measurements from each of the four sensors - the Raspberry Pi Pico lacking network connectivity.
"There are many people that might ask that why should I care about the environment monitoring, which is a valid question," Singh notes. "With the changing environment global warming, air pollution, water pollution etc. becoming the most dangerous problems for us. With the constant monitoring of the environment, we would get the data of the air pollution that would help us to take proper measures."
The crowdfunding campaign for the Pico Sense HAT is now live on Kickstarter, priced at £30 for the HAT plus a free Raspberry Pi Pico with soldered headers. Delivery is expected to take place in December this year.