Little Bird
Pan-Tilt HAT - Full kit
Ideal for a mini CCTV system, this set of horizontal and vertical motion servos will give you Pi camera movement with a minimum of fuss. Pan-Tilt HAT l...
Ideal for a mini CCTV system, this set of horizontal and vertical motion servos will give you Pi camera movement with a minimum of fuss.
Pan-Tilt HAT lets you mount and control one of our pan-tilt modules right on top of your Raspberry Pi. The HAT and its on-board microcontroller let you independently drive the two servos (pan and tilt), as well as driving up to 24 regular LED (with PWM control) or NeoPixel RGB (or RGBW) LEDs. There's also a handy slot through which you can route the servo, LED, and camera cables. The module pans and tilts through 180 degrees in each axis.
Use Pan-Tilt HAT with a Pi camera for face-tracking. Or mount it on top of your roving robot as a set of eyes. Why not stick a foam sword on top and make it swashbuckle?!
There's absolutely no soldering required (unless you decide to use the optional NeoPixel strip or ring), as the servos on the pan-tilt module have female jumper wires attached and we've soldered a strip of right-angled header pins to the underside of the HAT to connect them up.
We've also included a handy little acrylic camera mount to hold your camera snugly in the head of the pan-tilt module. The mount has a couple of mounting holes at the top to hold a NeoPixel stick and there's a neat little frosted diffuser to make the light super-dreamy. :-) We suggest one of the Adafruit RGBW NeoPixel sticks, as they give a lovely pure white (or any other colour!)
Note that the Pi camera, NeoPixel strip, male header, female to female jumper wires, Pi 3 and Pibow are not included. You'll need to pick them up separately!
The MagPi said, in their four star review, that Pan-Tilt HAT was a "highly enjoyable and extremely cute accessory".
Features
- Pan-tilt module (180 degrees motion through each axis) with two servos
- HAT with two servo channels, one PWM or NeoPixel RGB (or RGBW) LED channel
- Right-angled header pre-soldered to underside of HAT for servo and LED channels
- Slot to route servo, LED, and camera cables through
- Acrylic mount to hold Pi camera and NeoPixel strip (with diffuser) in place
- Pan-Tilt HAT pinout
- Compatible with Raspberry Pi 3B+, 3, 2, B+, A+, Zero, and Zero W
- Python library
- Comes fully assembled
Software
We've put together a super-simple Python library to make it super-easy to control Pan-Tilt HAT. Just tell Pan-Tilt HAT to which angle you'd like it to pan or tilt (from -90 to +90 degrees) and away it goes! There's even a couple of examples showing you how to pan and tilt, and control connected NeoPixels.
Our software does not support Raspbian Wheezy.
Notes
- The servos draw a lot of current, thus we recommend a good quality 2.5A power supply like the official Raspberry Pi power supply.
- Pi camera, NeoPixel strip, male header, female to female jumper wires, Pi 3 and Pibow are not included.
- Connect the brown wires of the servo cables to the GND pins on the servo channels.
- Servo channel 1 controls pan and servo channel 2 controls tilt, although you can easily swap these in software.
- You may require a set of standoffs to use Pan-Tilt HAT with the Raspberry Pi 3B+.
Jargon buster
Plain-language definitions for the technical terms used above.
- LED
- A light-emitting diode is a small electronic component that lights up when current flows through it in the correct direction. In this kit, LEDs create the flashing effect, so polarity and correct soldering matter for the project to work.
- microcontroller
- A microcontroller is a small computer on a chip that runs your program and controls connected inputs and outputs. For this product, it is the part that reads buttons and sensors, drives the display and speaker, and communicates over Bluetooth.
- NeoPixel
- A type of addressable LED system where colour data is sent along a single digital data line from one LED or controller to the next. Compatibility matters because the timing and signal format must match for the lights or driver board to respond correctly.
- PWM
- Pulse Width Modulation is a way for a digital pin to simulate variable output power by switching on and off very quickly. It matters for controlling things like LED brightness, motor speed, or servo-style signals from a microcontroller pin.
- RGB
- Short for red, green and blue, usually referring to an LED that can mix those three colours. It matters because controlling an RGB LED teaches how separate outputs combine to create different colours.
- servo
- A servo is a motor with built-in position control, usually told to move to a specific angle by a control signal. It matters when you need repeatable movement, such as steering, arms, flaps, or linkages, rather than continuous spinning.
Find this product in
Brands
Raspberry Pi
Robotics & Motion
Related Tutorials
Free guides on learn.littlebird.com.au
