2327 - Raspberry Pi PWM Servo Hat Development Board

Excellent product! Worked well and as promised. Simple soldering effort required. Python library and related documentation can use some love and care.

I'm using this to drive the steering servo and speed controller on a converted RC car, as well as to drive a couple RGB LEDs (connected to 6 of the drivers) and a servo to pan a pair of range detectors.This is easy to attach to the RPi and it includes a small perf/circuit area that I used to wire up a MCP3008 A2D-SPI. That was an added benefit of the HAT, as it made it easy for me to add that part of my project without requiring a separate board. The circuit area is 5x10 perf/through holes. These are next to a group of 3x5 holes connected to the RPi 5V, 5 3.3V, and GND. This makes for a nice area to add a small amount of logic to your project. This isn't really called out in the description.I mentioned driving a couple of RGB LEDs... Of course the RPi can do this with GPIO pins, but:1. It takes up 3 GPIO pins per LED2. Requires CPU cycles to drive the PWM signals for each colorMy main use of this HAT was to control the steering, throttle, and scan of my car, but that left a number of open channels. I decided to use 6 of these to drive 2 RGB LEDs. The advantage is that it's not tying up RPi GPIO pins, and you send the PWM parameters to the HAT and then forget about them (no RPi CPU overhead to keep the LEDs at their color/brightness, until you want to change them). With 16 channels, I used 3 to control the car, 6 to control 2 RGB LEDs, and that leaves me with 9 that I can use for additional functions.The PWM controller uses a single (software configurable) time base - so, if you are driving servos, the non-servo uses need to adapt to the time base needed for servos - but for my 2 RGB LEDs, that's not a problem.I recommend this for anyone that has a RPi project that needs to control a few servos (up to 16) as well as a few other PWM controlled devices. This takes the PWM operation off of the RPi, allowing the RPi to do other things while just sending control information to the HAT when things need to change.

Servo Hat was easy to assemble and worked as expected. Only con is the lack of working examples (code). If someone could post links to projects where code can be reviewed/copied it would be great. Googling hasn't produced many results.

Hi all - happy with the purchase.Gripes: 1) Does not fit into the standard pi case with the RPI 2 main board. I put my Canakit case in a Bridgeport and milled out the innards of the box allowing both boards to fit... Yeah ! hurry for me! ( For those of you who don't have a Bridgeport in your kitchen - you can use a dremel tool instead. So ... minus 1/2 star (4.5) 2) The Servo Hat / Mezzanine card needs to be reinforced on nylon/plastic pedestals so the two PCBs stay nice and parallel together. I think that should have been in the packaging... minus 1/2 star ... (4.0)But , there was no false advertising issues here... everything works as expected, and I got the servos working in about 30 minutes after assembly (and tinkering with the python scripts).I would say this is a solid purchase.- Dave

This is the best servo hat that I have ever used. They provide two ways to power the servos: barrel jack and terminal block. Adafruit seems to be the only company that realizes that you need to separate the RPi's power from the servo's power. The power in will not attempt to power the RPi and vice versa. This allows you to use servos with higher current draws and different voltages. The input voltages are marked as +5V on the board, but that doesn't seem to be a requirement. I've been running it at ~8V. Also, the small proto area is incredibly useful.

I needed something on my RPI3 to drive my pan/tilt camera on my robot. This works great, with extra pins for another 14 servos. You can get code stubs on the Adafruit Site.

This is a hacker piece. Full feature set with precise control and simple. You must know Python (or learn!) to make it work. A+ on the nice example code provided on line. Confirmed will drive anything from a 1990's analogue to faster digitals. Being able to watch your code get up and walk off is so much fun!

The servo hat functions as advertised. Buyer should note that getting this product operational involves 1-2 hours of soldering 60+ pins. Pins to extend the GPIO and 3v/5v/ground are not included with the product. If mounting the hat on top of the raspi, buyer should also consider getting a package of stand-off bolts to hold the board rigid, as the plastic GPIO connector block provides little stability.