GPIO pins

Question

I wanted to use this for a HiFi project, but it seems to use all the GPIO pins, and I need more pins for IR reciever and a small LCD screen, is this impossible or is there a way around it?

e14 Contributor · Answer

The audio card uses i2c from Raspberry Pi, and a single GPIO output, plus the lines form the P5 header. There are lines available (i2c is multidrop anyway). 1. If the user is not skilled with a soldering iron, there is unfortunately no mechanical access to the GPIO pins once the audio card has been plugged on to the top of the Pi. Also, options to ‘stack’ the board using expansion options like PiFace Rack, are not possible either, because the Raspberry Pi P5 pins are needed make the board work. P5 is not part of the expansion board specification. 2. With soldering skills, the user could demount the pogo pin header, fit an 8-pin header to his Pi, and fit one of the opposite gender to his sound card. Short ribbon cables could then be constructed to join the two boards together, breaking out the GPIO’s required to drive display and IR receiver. 3. Again, with soldering skills, the relevant GPIO’s required can be taken from the back of the Pi with very fine and short flying leads. Of course, all of the soldering options will invalidate any warranty in place for the Raspberry Pi and the Audio Card, but if you know what you are doing, should be fine. There is also a product called PiFace Control and Display that gives you the display and remote control options you might want, together with software required to drive it.