Qwiic HAT for Raspberry Pi Hookup Guide
Englandsaurus Introduction
This Qwiic HAT for Raspberry Pi is 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 HAT connects the I2C bus (GND, 3.3V, SDA, and SCL) on your Raspberry Pi to an array of Qwiic connectors. It also has a few important pins on the Raspberry Pi broken out for easy access. 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 hookup guide, you will need any Raspberry Pi with 2x20 male headers.
A Pi Zero W will also work but you will need to make sure to solder some male headers to it.
Now you probably didn't buy the Qwiic HAT 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 HAT. 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 HAT has 4 Qwiic connect ports, all on the same I2C bus. In addition to this, some of the pins on the Raspberry Pi are broken out for the user.
Hardware Assembly
To get started with your Qwiic HAT, simply plug it into the headers on the Raspberry Pi, make sure that the "USB" arrow on the HAT is pointing towards the USB on the Raspberry Pi.
Once the HAT is plugged in, you can start plugging in any Qwiic enabled sensors you might have.
Getting an OS
We recommend checking out the Raspberry Pi 3 Hookup Guide to install the operating system to flash the image to your microSD card for detailed instructions.
Raspberry Pi 3 Starter Kit Hookup Guide
April 11, 2016
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 the next section. Be patient — each of these steps can take a while depending on the speed of your microSD card.
- Download an Image — Download your favorite Linux distribution. For beginners, we recommend getting NOOBS image.
- Flashing the Image — Follow the instructions from the Raspberry Pi 3 Kit Hookup Guide to flash your microSD card. You can also follow the official Raspberry Pi installation instructions.
Configuring the Pi
The peripherals are not turned on by default. For those using Qwiic-enabled devices, you will want to enable I2C port. There are two methods to adjust the settings. This is outlined in our Raspberry Pi I2C tutorial.
Raspberry Pi SPI and I2C Tutorial
October 29, 2015
We've included the following instructions from the tutorial. To enable it, follow the steps below.
Raspberry Pi Configuration via Desktop GUI
You can use the Desktop GUI by heading to the Pi Start Menu > Preferences > Raspberry Pi Configuration.
A window will pop up with different tabs to adjust settings. What we are interested is the Interfaces tab. Click on the tab and select Enable for I2C. At this point, you can enable additional interfaces depending on your project needs. Click on the OK button to same.
We recommend restarting your Pi to ensure that the changes to take effect. Click on the Pi Start Menu > Preferences > Shutdown. Since we just need to restart, click on the Restart button.
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| Shutdown | Turn Off, Restart, Log Off |
raspi-config Tool via Terminal
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 - Also select
yesif it asks about automatically loading the kernel module. - Use the right arrow to select the
<Finish>button. - Select
yeswhen it asks to reboot.
The system will reboot. When it comes back up, log in and enter the following command
language:bash
ls /dev/*i2c*
The Pi should respond with
language:bash
/dev/i2c-1
Which represents the user-mode I2C interface.
Scanning for I2C Devices
If you are using the Raspberry Pi to quickly connect to I2C devices, the best place to start would be to scan for an I2C device on the bus.
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. Enter the following command.
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. Enter the following command in the command line. The -y flag will disable interactive mode so that you do not have to wait for confirmation. The 1 indicates that we are scanning for I2C devices on I2C bus 1 (e.g. i2c-1).
language:bash
i2cdetect -y 1
You will get an output from your Raspberry Pi similar to the output below.
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. Your address may vary depending on what is connected to the I2C bus. For advanced users, you can try to read and write its registers using the i2cget, i2cset and i2cdump commands.
Qwiic Py Drivers
Now that you have I2C set up on your Pi, you can start programming your Qwiic devices on your Pi or if you'd like to start with some examples, we have a host of Python drivers for Qwiic breakouts available in the GitHub repository linked below. You can read more about Python for the SparkFun Qwiic system in this blog post.
Resources and Going Further
For more information, check out the resources below:
- Qwiic Hat Schematic (PDF)
- Qwiic HAT Eagle Files (ZIP)
- Qwiic System Landing Page
- Qwiic HAT GitHub Repository
Now that you have your Qwiic HAT ready to go, it's time to hook it up to some 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: