The Raspberry Pi Build HAT is an add-on board that connects to the 40-pin GPIO header of your Raspberry Pi. Designed in collaboration with LEGO® Education, it makes it easy to control LEGO® Technic™ motors and sensors — like those found in the LEGO® Education SPIKE™ Prime set — directly from your Raspberry Pi (using Python, for example).
Today we’re delighted to announce that the Build HAT firmware, together with its signing keys, is now open source and available under the permissive BSD 3-Clause licence.
When we launched the Build HAT, the firmware that runs on its on-board microcontroller was released in binary form only. While it was fully functional and documented via the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s Python Build HAT library, the firmware itself wasn’t something you could inspect, modify, or rebuild.
Get the firmware and start exploring
You’ll now find the full firmware source code in the Build HAT GitHub repository, along with build instructions and documentation of the protocol it uses to communicate with the host Raspberry Pi. Our colleagues at the Raspberry Pi Foundation have also updated their Python library with new documentation on how to use it with homebrew firmware.
Whether you’re curious about how the Build HAT firmware works, want to compile it yourself, or plan to modify it for your own projects, everything you need is now openly available.
Why open it up?
We like to give people the tools to understand and take control of the technology they use where we can. Open-sourcing the Build HAT firmware invites the Raspberry Pi community to customise it and create with it in new ways: whether you’re integrating the Build HAT with other hardware, exploring alternative host platforms, or simply curious about the internals of the firmware, now you’re free to dig in.
We and the Raspberry Pi Foundation have been fortunate to receive help from a number of people with our project to open-source the Build HAT firmware. We’d like to extend particular thanks to Chris Richardson, Patrick Cherry, and our partners at LEGO® Education.
The Raspberry Pi Build HAT has already helped people turn thousands of creative ideas into reality. We hope this change will inspire even more amazing projects and brilliant builds!
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Source: https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/build- ... en-source/