The Pro division of Arduino has extended its Portenta product line with a new board: the Portenta Hat Carrier. The new board allows the Portenta system-on-modules (SoMs) to work with Raspberry Pi HAT (Hardware Attached on Top) add-on boards. This lets you use the Arduino industrial platform for a variety of applications, from prototyping to the most demanding of industrial settings.

Turn Portenta into a Raspberry Pi?

The Portenta Hat Carrier board measures 85 mm × 56 mm (3.35″ × 2.6″, coincidentally exactly the size of a Raspberry Pi Model B board) and can be used with all current Portenta modules (X8, H7 and C33). Besides a 40-pin Raspberry Pi HAT connector, the carrier also provides an RJ45 Gigabit Ethernet connector, a female USB-A connector, and a CAN bus transceiver. A MIPI camera connector is available for connecting Raspberry Pi compatible cameras, practical for machine vision applications.

Easy Debugging with the Portenta Hat Carrier

A JTAG connector facilitates application debugging, while a PWM-based fan controller helps to manage heat under high workloads. Sensors, both analog and digital, and actuators (digital only) can be connected via an additional 16-way pin header. A microSD slot has not been forgotten, either.

Multiple Power Options

For powering the Portenta Hat Carrier plus Portenta several options are available. A screw terminal block allows connecting either a 7–32 VDC or a 5 VDC power supply. The Portenta’s USB-C connector can power the system too and so does the 5 VDC pin on the 40-pin HAT connector. Note that the system is incompatible with the Raspberry Pi PoE+ Power over Ethernet HATs.

The Portenta Hat Carrier retails at a price of about €50.