Pi Cap · Feb 13, 2021

Introducing the Pi Cap: powerful sensors for the Raspberry Pi

Our Pi Cap connects Electric Paint to the world of Raspberry Pi, opening up exciting new possibilities

Pi Cap transports the power of our Touch Board from the Arduino galaxy and beams it into the Raspberry Pi universe. We took its best features; capacitive touch, proximity (distance) sensing, audio output and added our own very special, super-easy onboarding experience.

What can I do with a Pi Cap?

The computing power of the Raspberry Pi, combined with the interface prototyping power of the Pi Cap, gives engineers, hobbyists and makers huge potential for building interactive projection-mapping projects, music machines, amazing wearables and so much more!

Enhance a wall display with projection-mapped graphics that respond to visitors. Turn your Raspberry Pi into a networkable music machine with polyphonic sample playback and modulation. Make interactive wearables with high-resolution touch-sensor inputs driving LEDs and displays, or create customised touch interfaces for your favourite Pi games or robots.

Add amazing features to any Raspberry Pi

The Pi Cap brings many features together in one device. Other Raspberry Pi hats can only do one job. The Pi Cap is different; it’s packed with loads of useful features so you don’t have to buy lots of hats to make your project:

The Pi Cap uses the same robust capacitive sensing hardware as our Touch Board. We’ve ported our powerful software libraries so that you can control and tune the sensors to your liking. They’re available in Python, Node.js and C++, take your pick!

Connect your Pi to anything Connect your Pi to anything The Pi Cap has 12 electrodes along the top edge. That means you can connect to those electrodes with wires, Electric Paint, crocodile clips, M3-sized nuts and bolts, solder or anything conductive you can think of.

Audio Output The Raspberry Pi Zero doesn’t have an audio output. The Pi Cap comes with a 3.5mm audio jack, so you get high-quality audio output on the Raspberry Pi Zero, or any other recent Pi.

Music Machine Contrary to our Touch Board, the Pi Cap is able to play multiple MP3 files simultaneously, which is known as polyphonic playback. Simply install Touch MP3 to turn your Pi into a polyphonic sampler. This way you can start mixing your sounds or songs using the touch sensors.

RGB Status LED The Pi Cap has an RGB status LED to let you know that it’s booting up, whether its recorded a touch and more. Plus, it shines neatly through one of the mounting holes in the Zero!

GPIO Breakouts See that break out area to the right? 7 GPIO pins are brought out that allows you to add additional features, like LEDs, to the Pi Cap.

Cross-Pi Compatibility We are crazy for the Zero, but we love other Pis too. Did we mention that the PiCap works on Raspberry Pi 1 Models A+ and B+, Pi 2 Model B, and Pi 3 Models B and B+? We don’t want to leave anyone out!