Is Pi-Plates a U.S. Company?

Yes, Pi-Plates are designed, tested, and shipped from our state of the art facility in Duluth, Georgia.

 

Which Versions of Raspberry Pi are Compatible with Pi-Plates?

Pi-Plates are mechanically and electrically compatible with all later revisions of the Raspberry Pi. Pi-Plates are NOT compatible with the original Raspberry Pi with the 28 pin connector nor the Compute Module.

 

Do Pi-Plates Use All of the GPIO Pins on the Raspberry Pi?

No, Pi-Plates were designed to use as few GPIO pins as possible. They require two dedicated pins (GPIO7 and 25) three shared pins (GPIO9, 10, and 11), and two optional pins (GPIO22 and 24). Here is the detailed breakdown of usage:

Base Usage - Dedicated and Shared

  1. SPI Interface - except for GPIO7 the SPI bus is available for your application if CE0 (GPIO8) is used as the device select.
    1. GPIO7 (CE1)
    2. GPIO9 (MISO)
    3. GPIO10 (MOSI)
    4. GPIO11 (SCKL)
  2. GPIO25 (ppFRAME)

Optional Interrupt Usage

GPIO22

Optional Power Down Signal

GPIO24

 

Do Pi-Plates Take Power away from My Raspberry Pi or Abuse it in Any Way?

No, Pi-Plates were designed to:

  1. Use as little power as possible
  2. Use the correct voltage levels on the Raspberry Pi interface
  3. When necessary provide auxiliary power inputs to drive high current loads

 

How Do You Ship?

To keep things simple and as inexpensive as possible, we ship all of our products via  U.S. Postal Service Flat Rate Priority Mail. This applies to both U.S. and overseas shipments.

 

Will You Ship to My Country?

In most cases yes. But, check with your local postal service and verify that they will accept packages from the United States. Also be advised that once our products leave the U.S. we cannot always track them. And we have no control over how long your local customs office will keep your shipment. We are not responsible for orders that are lost or not delivered after they arrive in your country.

 

What about U.S. Taxes?

Only customers in the state of Georgia will be required to pay taxes on their purchases - sorry, it's the law. All other U.S. customers are exempt.

 

What about VAT and Duties and International Taxes?

You (the buyer) are responsible for any taxes, fees, duties or other charges which may be imposed by your post office or other government agency in your country.  Any such charges are NOT included in the purchase price or shipping charge.   If in doubt, please check with your own post office before placing an order.

 

What Standards Do Pi-Plates Conform To?

FCC

Pi-Plates comply with Part 15 of the FCC Rules.

ROHS

All components and materials used on Pi-Plates devices meet the ROHS standards

Where is Your Software?

All of our Python modules can be installed directly from the PIP Python repository simply by typing sudo pip install pi-plates or sudo pip3 install pi-plates from the command line. For more detailed information, jump over to our documentation pages. Patches and many examples of Python code can be found on our CODE page. Finally, you will find a number of code snippets in our documentation. 

 

Can You Help Me with My Project?

We love to help our customers and are very curious about what they're doing but our bandwidth is limited so please don't ask us to assist you with software or hardware that is not related to our products.