RasPiComm vs Gertboard

After the availability announcement of the Gertboard, a couple of days after my first post about the RasPiComm, questions arose on some blogs whether the RasPiComm is an alternative to the Gertboard or not.

So here is the answer: It is not!

The gertboard, especially the first YouTube video about it, has been around for a while. Gert van Loo is the father of this platform. These two boards have very few in common. The Gertboard is an easy-to-assemble board with a lot of features. It comes as a self-assembly kit, it is perfect for educational purposes. All you need is a soldering iron and a little bit of time and you can learn a lot and have fun!

The RasPiComm, as its name indicates, is specialized more on serial communication. It comes fully assembled, and it’s optimized for minimum space requirement. The highlight of the RasPiComm is its RS485 connector.  There are already lots of boards with relays, (stepper-)motor control and all the stuff you can imagine which can be connected via RS485. The advantage is that you can use long cables (only 2 wires needed) to control these boards (4000ft or 1200m are allowed with RS485!) and that you can connect up to 256 boards to the RasPiComm.

Here is a feature comparison chart:

Gertboard	RasPiComm
Self-assembly kit	assembled
Connected to RPi with flat-cable	Piggyback board (no cable needed)
12x buffered I/O	5x unbuffered Inputs
3x push buttons	5x pushbuttons (4-way joystick with center-push)
6x open collector drivers (50V, 0.5A)	2x open collector drivers (5V, 0.2A)
48V, 4A motor controller	–
28-pin dual in line ATmega microcontroller	–
2-channel 8/10/12 bit Digital to Analogue converter	–
2-channel 10 bit Analogue to Digital converter	–
2-channel 8/10/12 bit Digital to Analogue converter	–
SPI connector to ATMega	SPI connector to Raspberry Pi
–	I2C connector
–	Real-time clock (RTC)
–	RS-232
–	RS-485

I think the comparison chart shows pretty well that these two boards have totally different foci. So go ahead and buy both 🙂