Raspberry Pi Sense HAT

The Sense HAT adds a wide range of sensor capabilities to the Raspberry Pi, sitting on top of the main computer board via the 40 GPIO pins to create an ‘Astro Pi’.

An Astro Pi is being sent up to the International Space Station and schoolchildren are being invited to write code for it in a competition.

Anyone can build an Astro Pi back on Earth with a standard Raspberry Pi Model A+, Model B+ or Raspberry Pi 2 Model B+ by adding the Sense HAT, which has several integrated circuit based sensors can be used for many different types of experiments, applications, and even games.

The sensors enable users to read Orientation (yaw, pitch & roll) via an accelerometer, 3D gyroscope and magnetometer; Pressure; Humidity and Temperature.

The LED Matrix enables display of the data from the various sensors, such as showing which way is geomagnetic North by using the magnetometer. It can also be used to play games like Tetris, Pong and Snake with the joystick.

The joystick can also be used to enable a human user to interact with the programs running on the Raspberry Pi Sense HAT.
Writing programs for the Sense HAT is very simple, with a Python library available to get started quickly and easily.

The AstroPi website http://astro-pi.org/ also contains a variety of ideas and instructions for using the Raspberry Pi and Sense HAT on the International Space Station.