In this section, we will cover guidelines and suggestions to help keep your Raspberry Pi safe while you are interfacing electronics with it. By being careful and diligent in your approach, these guidelines will help you minimize any potential for damage to your Raspberry Pi or electronics components.
Don't worry if some of the electronic-orientated points such as voltages and currents do not make sense at the moment. We'll be touching on these concepts throughout this chapter, and during Section 3, IoT Playground – Practical Examples to Interact with the Physical World, of this book, so more context will be coming:
- Never apply more than 3.3 volts to any input GPIO pin. Higher voltages can cause damage.
- Never use more than 8 mA from any single output GPIO pin (they can handle up to ~16 mA, but by default, stick to 8 mA to ensure reliable GPIO operation). As a rule of thumb, do not power anything other than LEDs and breakout...
