HatDrive! Nano for Raspberry Pi 5

Jargon buster

Plain-language definitions for the technical terms used above.

Buck converter

A power circuit that reduces a higher DC voltage to a lower DC voltage. It is useful when your supply voltage is too high for a module or microcontroller and you want less heat and better efficiency than a simple linear regulator.

FPC

FPC stands for flexible printed circuit, a thin flat flexible cable or connector style often used where space is tight or some movement is needed, commonly for displays, cameras and other high-density connections. Connecting to an FPC connector generally needs a matching cable with the correct pin count, pitch and contact orientation.

GPIO

General-purpose input/output pins are microcontroller pins you can set in software to read signals, switch devices on and off, or connect to peripherals. The number of GPIO pins matters because it limits how many buttons, LEDs, sensors, and other parts you can wire directly to the board.

Impedance

Impedance is the total opposition a component or circuit presents to alternating current, measured in ohms, combining resistance with frequency-dependent reactance. It appears in many contexts, such as matching a speaker's impedance (for example 4 ohm or 8 ohm) to an amplifier or the input and output impedance of signal circuits, and a correct match helps avoid weak signals, distortion or damage.

M.2

M.2 is a compact edge-connector standard for plugging small modules - such as SSDs, wireless cards or microcontroller modules - into a host board without soldering. The same slot shape can carry different interfaces (for example PCIe, SATA or USB), so keying and the supported module type need to be checked.

NVMe

A high-speed storage standard commonly used by modern SSDs. NVMe support matters if you want faster storage for large AI models, video files or operating system images than a typical microSD card can provide.