The RGB 16×2 LCD+Keypad Pi Plate from Adafruit Industries makes a great addition to an Internet radio project. This little circuit board makes it easy to add an LCD display and numeric keypad to a Raspberry Pi.
In this post, we update our original Raspberry Pi Internet Radio project using this cool Pi Plate. Our new radio shares many of the features of the original radio and adds: compact size; a color-changing LCD display; and more buttons for an improved user interface.
Adafruit RGB Negative 16×2 LCD+Keypad Kit for Raspberry Pi – This new Adafruit Pi Plate makes it easy to use an RGB 16×2 Character LCD. We really like the RGB Character LCDs we stock in the shop. (For RGB we have RGB negative and RGB positive.) Unfortunately, these LCDs do require quite a few digital pins, 6 to control the LCD and then another 3 to control the RGB backlight for a total of 9 pins. That’s nearly all the GPIO available on a Pi! (read more)
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, or even use Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for MakeCode, CircuitPython, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell with Google Hangouts On-Air is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
