Like the look of that and want one already? Head over to Kickstarter!

Do you find yourself constantly forgetting how to set-up the RPi.GPIO Python library? I know I do: trying to remember the correct way of doing things has never been my strong point!

Most of the time when I’m programming the Pi to do hardware stuff, I have to sit with a laptop open next to me with a cheat sheet up on the screen. Alex Eames has come up with a great solution to this problem – a GPIO reference ruler. Other reference rulers, for general electronics, have been out there for a while, but no-one has come up with one for the Raspberry Pi, until now. You can see a picture of Alex’s new ruler below (click to embiggen):

To work out whether there are enough people interested in the ruler, Alex has launched it on Kickstarter today, so head over there to pledge. There are 500 rulers available at the £3 Early-bird price (plus shipping) and after that it rises to £4. This is extremely good value considering the finish and sheer usefulness of the product (see below for a mini review). Delivery is expected in September/October.

Mini review

I got one of the pre-production rulers (such as the one pictured) a few days ago and I’ve already found it invaluable. I needed to program a lot of GPIO pins in a short period of time and used the ruler instead of booting up my laptop to get the proper commands. The commands listed on the ruler are all the ones you generally use when doing electronics experiments with the Pi. The ruler also includes a handy reference for the GPIO pins themselves, using the BCM numbering system, and you can push the holes in the ruler over the GPIO pins for ease-of-use. I’ve also found it very useful as a ruler – I needed to measure the length of some wires for an upcoming project and it just happened to be to hand. The white silkscreen is not quite production-sharp on the one I’ve got, but is still easily readable, and the gold parts make it look very attractive. If you consider that it’s basically £3-4, and there’s nothing like it out there, it’s a bargain. Rating: 10/10.

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