Viewer Question: Why use Teensy and not RPi GPIO in portable RPi project?

Former Member over 12 years ago

I was wondering why Ben used a Teensy and not the GPIO on the Raspberry Pi in his portable Raspberry Pi project.

I get that the Teensy can act as a HID, but one of the main features of the Raspberry are it's GPIO.

Not using them seems to add complexity and looks like overkill.

0 shabaz over 12 years ago

Good question. It looks like a design decision, basically it would mean that no software changes are needed - the OS and the applications can work with no modifications or drivers needed, and upgraded over time with standard images.
This was probably quicker to do, and usually it's good to use interfaces especially for this reason: the work/knowledge done to integrating the buttons with teensy code could now be used on (say) a different portable project too. Had it been done with GPIO, the effort to develop the driver would have little reuse on any other platform. Plus, I don't think there is any ADC for analog controls (I could be wrong).
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0 colecago over 12 years ago in reply to shabaz

Exactly. Writing a driver or some python -> MAME interface would have taken much more time than sticking the teensy in there pretending to be a gamepad.
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0 QuantumAberrant over 12 years ago in reply to colecago

colecago wrote:

Exactly. Writing a driver or some python -> MAME interface would have taken much more time than sticking the teensy in there pretending to be a gamepad.

Actually it's already been done. http://learn.adafruit.com/retro-gaming-with-raspberry-pi

I'm leaning towards the lack of analog input as the reason for choosing a teensy. I'm also a big fan of the teensy in general. That said, depending on the games you want to play, an analog joystick might not be necessary.
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