Picade X HAT USB-C

Description

Turn your Raspberry Pi into a retro gaming machine. This Picade HAT includes joystick and button inputs, a 3 watt I2S mono DAC/amplifier and a soft power switch.

Simply install this hat onto your Pi, plug a USB-C power supply into the connector on the hat (it back powers the Pi through the GPIO pins), wire up your controls and install a driver.

Wire the hat yourself to your control board or use a premade loom

Features

• I2S audio DAC with 3W amplifier (mono) and push-fit terminals
• Safe power on/off system with tactile power button and LED
• USB-C connector for power (back-powers your Pi)
• 4-way digital joystick inputs
• 6x player button inputs
• 4x utility button inputs
• 1x soft power switch input
• 1x power LED output
• Plasma button connector
• Breakout pins for power, I2C, and 2 additional buttons
• Picade X HAT pinout
• Compatible with all 40-pin Raspberry Pi models

The I2S DAC blends both channels of digital audio from the Raspberry Pi into a single mono output. This is then passed through a 3W amplifier to power a connected speaker.

The board also features a soft power switch that allows you turn your Pi on and off safely without risk of SD card corruption. Tap the connected button to start up, and press and hold it for 3 seconds to fully shutdown and disconnect power.

Software

Pimoroni has put together a simple one-line installer that’ll get everything set up on your Picade X HAT, the controls, safe shutdown, and audio. Open a terminal and type curl https://get.pimoroni.com/picadehat | bash to run the installer. You’ll need to reboot once the installation is complete, if it doesn’t prompt you to do so.

The software does not support Raspbian Wheezy

Notes

With USB-C power connected through Picade X HAT you’ll need either to tap the connected power button or the button marked “switch” on the HAT to power on your Pi.