Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Adafruit PiGRRL 2 Review



Last year I got a PiGRRL 2 kit as a gift and just recently assembled it.  Overall, I was pretty impressed with the kit.

The instructions were accurate, and very complete.  Much of the assembly process involved soldering, and while I'm an experienced solderer, I think the instructions would be sufficient if you are a beginner when it comes to soldering.

The kit provides nearly everything you need except for the plastic case, but Adafruit provides the files necessary to 3d print your own.  I don't have a 3d printer (yet) so I had a generous friend print the case for me.

My only significant complaint with the kit involves, surprisingly, the screws.  The kit didn't come with the required screws, so I substituted some screws I already had on hand.  I ended up having a number of problems because in some cases the screws were a little too long (and would have pushed through the case) and in other cases the heads of the screws I used were a little too wide so they didn't fit into some recesses in the 3D printed case.  In the end, I was able to work around these issues by cutting off the ends of the screws and drilling out some of the recesses, but since the case was clearly designed for a specifically sized screw it would have been nice if those were included in the kit.

The PiGRRL 2 without its clothes