It's not hard to put our finger on why we like this new Raspberry Pi HAT so much—and make no mistake, we’ve recommended plenty Raspberry Pi HATs in the past. Created by SB Components, this new HAT promises to deliver fingerprint scanning capabilities to the Raspberry Pi through the development of its new PiFinger HAT.
The team recently hit their crowdfunding goal through Kickstarter and plans to ship the first batch of modules no later than February of 2021. It's worth noting, this is the first fingerprint HAT ever developed for the Raspberry Pi.
(Image credit: SB Components)
The board is installed by connecting it directly to the Raspberry Pi GPIO header, but it can also be used on a PC via a USB to UART interface. The HAT PCB features a Nuvoton MCU with a crypto-accelerator, Cortex-M23 TrustZone security, as well as XOM facilities. Users can interface with the Nuvoton MCU using UART the protocol via the GPIO or USB.
The HAT uses a 2D capacitive fingerprint scanner. The scanning area measures in at 8mm x 8mm with a resolution of 176px x 176px. There's an OLED display as well as several LEDs for various status indicators.
This HAT appears to provide an easy way to add fingerprint identification to a Raspberry Pi project. From security purposes to custom identification, the uses are limited only by the mind of the developer. Right now there are no details on how to write code that will use this board, Python is the most likely candidate but as it uses serial / UART then it should be relatively easy to use with other languages. Check out the PiFinger Kickstarter page for more details and don't forget to swing by our list of best Raspberry Pi projects for more cool Pi creations.
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Ash Hill is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware with a wealth of experience in the hobby electronics, 3D printing and PCs. She manages the Pi projects of the month and much of our daily Raspberry Pi reporting while also finding the best coupons and deals on all tech.
