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Turn Your Raspberry Pi Zero Wireless Without Wi-Fi Or Bluetooth USB Dongles!

Monday, May 09, 2016

If you are using a Raspberry Pi Zero (or previous models of the Raspberry Pi) and would like to add Bluetooth and WiFi capabilities to the board without using USB dongles, you can do this by using the IoT HAT, which is a Raspberry Pi HAT add-on board.

The IoT HAT board is the size of the Raspberry Pi Zero so it fits perfectly on the Pi Zero, though you can also use the IoT HAT board with all previous Raspberry Pi models with the 40 pins GPIO connector including Raspberry Pi 2, Raspberry Pi A+ and Raspberry Pi B+. After connecting the IoT HAT to your Raspberry Pi, you get 11 GPIO pins left for you to use.

With the IoT HAT board, you can turn your Raspberry Pi Zero wireless without the messy and cluttered USB dongle set up, which requires a Bluetooth and WiFi dongles, a USB adapter and a USB hub as the Raspberry Pi Zero only has a micro USB port.
Other neat features of the IoT HAT board are low power consumption and wireless radio. The IoT Hat uses the same wireless radio BCM43438 chip as the Raspberry Pi 3 so all Bluetooth and WiFi software for Raspberry Pi is compatible. Also, you can increase the RF range of the on-board antenna of the IoT HAT by attaching an external antenna without any soldering.
Best of all, if you have KODI embedded on RecalBox you can connect it to the IoT Hat and play games and stream media from your computer.

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