Qwiic Shield for Arduino & Photon Hookup Guide

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Contributors: Englandsaurus
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Introduction

The Qwiic Shield (for Arduino or Particle Photon) is the first step in getting acquainted with SparkFun's Qwiic connect ecosystem. It connects the I2C bus (GND, 3.3V, SDA, and SCL) on your Arduino or Photon board to a series of SparkFun Qwiic connectors. The board already has the circuitry to convert the 5V given to the 3.3V required by I2C boards in our Qwiic ecosystem. The Arduino shield also has holes for mounting Qwiic boards. 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!

SparkFun Qwiic Shield for Arduino

SparkFun Qwiic Shield for Arduino

DEV-14352
$7.50
9

SparkFun Qwiic Shield for Photon

DEV-14477
Retired

Here's a quick overview of the Qwiic shield for Arduino. The Qwiic shield for Photon is similar but made for the Particle Photon's footprint.

Required Materials

To follow along with this hookup guide, you will need any Arduino with the R3 header footprint, or a Photon Board. This includes the Uno, RedBoard and many other Arduino compatible boards! Here are just a few of the compatible boards.

Arduino Uno - R3

Arduino Uno - R3

DEV-11021
$27.60
138
SparkFun RedBoard - Programmed with Arduino

SparkFun RedBoard - Programmed with Arduino

DEV-13975
$21.50
50

Particle Photon (Headers)

WRL-13774
32 Retired

Now you probably didn't buy the Qwiic shield if you didn't have any Qwiic products to use with it, right? Well, if you don't have any Qwiic products, the following might not be a bad place to start.

SparkFun GPS Breakout - XA1110 (Qwiic)

SparkFun GPS Breakout - XA1110 (Qwiic)

GPS-14414
$34.95
6
SparkFun Spectral Sensor Breakout - AS7262 Visible (Qwiic)

SparkFun Spectral Sensor Breakout - AS7262 Visible (Qwiic)

SEN-14347
$27.95
2
SparkFun Qwiic Adapter

SparkFun Qwiic Adapter

DEV-14495
$1.60
5

SparkFun Environmental Combo Breakout - CCS811/BME280 (Qwiic)

SEN-14348
20 Retired

Finally, you'll need our handy Qwiic cables to easily connect sensors to your Qwiic shield. Below are a few options.

Qwiic Cable - 100mm

Qwiic Cable - 100mm

PRT-14427
$1.50
Qwiic Cable - 50mm

Qwiic Cable - 50mm

PRT-14426
$0.95

Qwiic Cable - 200mm

PRT-14428
Retired

Qwiic Cable - 500mm

PRT-14429
1 Retired

Required Tools

You will need a soldering iron, solder, and general soldering accessories to solder the header pins to the Qwiic shields.

Solder Lead Free - 15-gram Tube

Solder Lead Free - 15-gram Tube

TOL-09163
$3.95
4
Soldering Iron - 30W (US, 110V)

Soldering Iron - 30W (US, 110V)

TOL-09507
$10.95
7

Suggested Reading

If you aren't familiar with the Qwiic system, we recommend reading here for an overview.

Qwiic Connect System
Qwiic Connect System

We would also recommend taking a look at the following tutorials if you aren't familiar with them.

How to Solder: Through-Hole Soldering

This tutorial covers everything you need to know about through-hole soldering.

I2C

An introduction to I2C, one of the main embedded communications protocols in use today.

Arduino Shields v2

An update to our classic Arduino Shields Tutorial! All things Arduino shields. What they are and how to assemble them.