Qwiic pHAT for Raspberry Pi Hookup Guide a learn.sparkfun.com tutorial
Available online at: http://sfe.io/t906
Introduction
This Qwiic pHAT for Raspberry Pi is based on the Qwiic Hat. The board adds the quickest and easiest way to utilize SparkFun's Qwiic ecosystem while still using that Raspberry Pi that you've come to know and love. This Qwiic pHAT connects the I2C bus (GND, 3.3V, SDA, and SCL) on your Raspberry Pi to an array of Qwiic connectors. Since the Qwiic system allows for daisy chaining (as long as your devices are on different addresses), you can stack as many sensors as you'd like to create a tower of sensing power!
Required Materials
To follow along with this tutorial, you will need the following materials. You may not need everything though depending on what you have. Add it to your cart, read through the guide, and adjust the cart as necessary.
Single Board Computer
You will need Raspberry Pi with 2x20 male headers installed.
A Pi Zero W will also work but you will need to make sure to solder some male headers to it.
Or you could stack it on any single board computer (like the NVIDIA Jetson Nano) that utilizes the 40-pin Raspberry Pi header footrpint.
Qwiic Board
Now you probably didn't buy the Qwiic pHAT if you didn't have any Qwiic products to use with it, right? If you don't have any Qwiic products, the following might not be a bad place to start.
Finally, you'll need our handy Qwiic cables to easily connect sensors to your Qwiic pHAT. Below are a few options.
Required Setup Tools
As a desktop, these devices are required:
- USB Mouse
- USB Keyboard
- HDMI monitor/TV/adapted VGA
- 5V Power Supply
Suggested Reading
If you aren't familiar with the Qwiic system, we recommend reading here for an overview.
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| Qwiic Connect System |
We would also recommend taking a look at the following tutorials if you aren't familiar with them.
Serial Terminal Basics
Hardware Overview
The Qwiic pHAT has 4x Qwiic connect ports, all on the same I2C bus. A 3.3V regulator is included to regulate voltage down for any Qwiic boards connected.
There are built-in pull-up resistors on board. If necessary, you can cut the traces to disable depending on the number of boards connected to the I2C bus.
Hardware Assembly
To get started with your Qwiic pHAT, simply plug it into the headers on the Raspberry Pi with the letters facing you.
Once the pHAT is plugged in, you can start plugging in any Qwiic enabled sensors you might have on either side.
Depending on your project, you can mount a qwiic enabled board on the mounting holes using standoffs.
 |  |
| Qwiic pHat on Jetson | Qwiic pHat on Google Coral |
Note: When placing a Raspberry Pi and the pHat in an enclosure (like the Pi Tin), we noticed that the pHAT was not fully inserted in Pi's header pins. You will need an additional stackable header for a secure connection depending on your enclosure.
I2C on Raspberry Pi
OS and Library Install
If you're starting from scratch, with a blank microSD card, you'll want to install Raspbian. If you've already got a working Raspbian system, skip ahead to step 3.
- Download the NOOBS image. As of this writing, it's at version 2.4.4.
- Follow the official installation instructions.
- Follow the Wiring Pi Instructions to get git, update and upgrade your Rasbpian packages, then install WiringPi.
Be patient -- each of these steps takes a while.
Once you've got wiringPi installed, run the gpio commands shown below.
language:bash
>gpio -v
>gpio readall
It should respond with some information about the wiringPi version and the Pi that its running on, then draw a table illustrating the configuration for the pins in the 40-pin connector.
Configuration
Like the SPI peripheral, I2C is not turned on by default. Again, we can use raspi-config to enable it.
- Run
sudo raspi-config. - Use the down arrow to select
5 Interfacing Options - Arrow down to
P5 I2C. - Select
yeswhen it asks you to enable I2C - Select
OKand thenFinish
Once you return to terminal, enter this command:
language:bash
>ls /dev/*i2c*
The Pi should respond with:
language:bash
/dev/i2c-1
Which represents the user-mode I2C interface.
Utilities
There is a set of command-line utility programs that can help get an I2C interface working. You can get them with the apt package manager.
language:bash
sudo apt-get install -y i2c-tools
In particular, the i2cdetect program will probe all the addresses on a bus, and report whether any devices are present. Call i2cdetect -y 1 to probe the first I2C bus, which is what the Qwiic pHAT is connected to.
language:bash
pi@raspberrypi:~/$ i2cdetect -y 1
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 a b c d e f
00: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
10: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
20: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
30: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
40: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
50: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
60: 60 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
70: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
This map indicates that there is a peripheral at address 0x60. We can read and write its registers using the i2cget, i2cset and i2cdump commands.
Resources and Going Further
For more information, check out the resources below:
Now that you have your Qwiic pHAT ready to go, it's time to check out some of Qwiic enabled products.
But I Already Have Sensors!
If you already have a handful of SparkFun sensors and parts? SparkFun has been putting our standard GND/VCC/SDA/SCL pinout on all our I2C boards for many years. This makes it possible to attach a Qwiic Adapter that will get your SparkFun I2C sensor or actuator onto the Qwiic system.
Here is the list of the boards that have the standard I2C pinout and will work with the Qwiic adapter board:
- 9DoF Stick IMU - LSM9DS1
- 9DoF IMU - MPU-9250
- 6DoF IMU - LSM303C
- 6DoF IMU - LSM6DS3
- Triple Axis Accelerometer - LIS3DH
- Triple Axis Magnetometer - MAG3110
- Triple Axis Magnetometer - MLX90393
- Compass Module - HMC6343
- Atmospheric Sensor - BME280
- Barometric Pressure Sensor - MS5803-14BA
- Barometric Pressure Sensor - T5403
- Humidity and Temperature Sensor - Si7021
- Digital Temperature Sensor - TMP102
- Particle Sensor - MAX30105
- Air Quality Sensor - CCS811
- ToF Range Finder - VL6180
- Haptic Motor Driver - DRV2605L
- Micro OLED Display
- RGB and Gesture Sensor - APDS-9960
- RGB Light Sensor - ISL29125
- LED Driver - LP55231
- DAC Breakout - MCP4725
- 16 Output I/O Expander - SX1509
- Battery Babysitter - BQ24075
Check out this related tutorial:
Raspberry Pi SPI and I2C Tutorial
October 29, 2015
learn.sparkfun.com | CC BY-SA 3.0 | SparkFun Electronics | Niwot, Colorado