What's in the Geocaching Raspberry Pi 2 Kit?

cstanton — Mon, 10 May 2021 17:40:56 GMT

Current Revision posted to Documents by cstanton on 5/10/2021 5:40:56 PM

When you enter to win a Raspberry Pi 2 GPS Kit (or if you choose to buy one yourself!) here are the items you will receive:

{gallery} Raspberry Pi 2 GPS Kit
Win this Kit: Here is the hardware you will receive if you win!
Raspberry Pi 2 + NOOBS: It wouldn't make much sense, if you didn't have the brains of the project.
Raspberry PiFace Control & Display: A screen to direct you to the cache and buttons to play with. It may not seem like much, but there could be an alternative.
Pi Shim: So that you can prototype your GPS kit before soldering it into a better form factor. Some assembly required.
Pi Shim Constructed: Just so you can see what it looks like when attached to the Pi
MicroStack Board: An easy way to plug in the GPS add-on
MicroStack GPS + Antenna Adapter: It'll tell you where you are, and you can connect an external antenna using the adapter cable
Antenna: If you're indoors or the nub of an antenna on the MicroStack isn't enough, here's a magnetic high-gain one you can attach!
Power Supply: 5v 2Amp power supply, while you're prototyping your GPS build. You'll have to be inventive for a portable power solution

{gallery} Raspberry Pi 2 GPS Kit

Win this Kit: Here is the hardware you will receive if you win!

Raspberry Pi 2 + NOOBS: It wouldn't make much sense, if you didn't have the brains of the project.

Raspberry PiFace Control & Display: A screen to direct you to the cache and buttons to play with. It may not seem like much, but there could be an alternative.

Pi Shim: So that you can prototype your GPS kit before soldering it into a better form factor. Some assembly required.

Pi Shim Constructed: Just so you can see what it looks like when attached to the Pi

MicroStack Board: An easy way to plug in the GPS add-on

MicroStack GPS + Antenna Adapter: It'll tell you where you are, and you can connect an external antenna using the adapter cable

Antenna: If you're indoors or the nub of an antenna on the MicroStack isn't enough, here's a magnetic high-gain one you can attach!

Power Supply: 5v 2Amp power supply, while you're prototyping your GPS build. You'll have to be inventive for a portable power solution

Raspberry Pi 2 with NOOBSRaspberry Pi 2 with NOOBS

What's a Pi project without the brains of the operation? The four core Raspberry Pi board comes with a Class 10 Sandisk microSD card pre-loaded with NOOBS allowing you to choose your operating system. However, I advise using Raspbian to utilise the add-on boards.

Raspberry PiFace Control and DisplayRaspberry PiFace Control and Display

Combining an LCD display along with infra-red sensor and buttons, the control and display board allows you to interface with your Pi without the need for a full screen monitor connected to it. This can be an ideal scenario for running the Pi portably or 'headless' with the LCD screen showing output from sensors or menus for configuration.

Pi ShimPi Shim

Unfortunately some add-on boards are not, by design, stackable. The Pi Shim allows you to breakout the GPIO which an add-on board isn't using for additional accessories connected to the Raspberry Pi. In the case of this kit, the PiFace CAD and Microstack Baseboard are able to work together for prototyping.

Microstack BaseboardMicrostack Baseboard

Breaking out the I2C and SPI (along with serial) pins to an easy plug and play baseboard, this add-on allows us to prototype with the Microstack boards such as the GPS add-on and accelerometer.

Microstack GPS Add-OnMicrostack GPS Add-On

The crux of the operation alongside the Raspberry Pi itself, the GPS add-on will give us our time, position and elevation information to help us to use the mathematics required to geo-locate.

Maxtena Active GPS AntennaMaxtena Active GPS Antenna

The GPS add-on itself has an antenna, though this is arguably not suitable for convenient indoors use. This active high-gain antenna allows us to relocate the antenna for the GPS add-on without compromising the structural integrity of the prototyping project.

RF uFL to SMA CableRF uFL to SMA Cable

Adding an antenna onto the Microstack GPS board is not a straight-forward connection. To save space/cost the add-on board has used a uFL connector for the antenna. So to join the active antenna, it requires this add-on cable to adjust it to an SMA plug.

Micro USB PSU 5v 2AMicro USB PSU 5v 2A

Although not portable, that should not matter when prototyping. The 5volt 2amp power supply is perfect for providing what the Pi 2 requires to be able to get us working and running with our project. Anything less just wouldn't be stable enough for what we need.

Or you can buy it as a kit!

Once you've got your Raspberry Pi 2 GPS Kit together, you can build along with element14 and begin Geocaching for an element14 Trackable!

Tags: geocaching, raspberry_pi_gps_kit, raspberry_pi_2, raspberry_pi_geocaching, geolocation, raspberry_pi_projects, geo_location