From the course: Raspberry Pi: GPIO

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Protecting GPIO input with resistors

Protecting GPIO input with resistors

From the course: Raspberry Pi: GPIO

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Protecting GPIO input with resistors

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- [Instructor] The Raspberry Pi GPIO can only handle 3.3 volts. It's important to restrict voltage to that level. Much more voltage will turn your Raspberry Pi into mush. In this hypothetical example, I'm using a solar panel as a censor. It puts out five volts, more than the recommended 3.3 volts for a Raspberry Pi. So we need to reduce the five volts to 3.3 volts. There are two ways to fix this. One is with a resistor. Another is with zener diodes. Let's check out the resistor method first. It's a technique called voltage dividing. For a complete discussion of voltage dividers, I highly recommend watching Voltage Dividers from Barron Stone's Electronics Foundations: Basic Circuits course in this library. In a voltage divider circuit, two resistors are used to divide the voltage between the Raspberry Pi and ground. These resistors are typically labeled R1 and R2. To calculate the proper values of the resistors, you…

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