SparkFun Qwiic Button Hookup Guide

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Contributors: El Duderino
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Introduction

Buttons are a great way to add a tactile input to your project but dealing with pull-up resistors, debouncing, polling, and using GPIO pins for each button can be a hassle. Enter the Qwiic Button (Red or Green) and the Qwiic Button Breakout! These breakouts eliminate nearly all the inconvenience of using buttons by converting everything to an easy-to-use I2C connection using the Qwiic Interface.

SparkFun Qwiic Button - Red LED

SparkFun Qwiic Button - Red LED

BOB-15932
$4.95
1
SparkFun Qwiic Button - Green LED

SparkFun Qwiic Button - Green LED

BOB-16842
$4.50
3
SparkFun Qwiic Button Breakout

SparkFun Qwiic Button Breakout

BOB-15931
$3.50
1

We have three versions of the Qwiic Button available. The Qwiic Button (Red) and Qwiic Button (Green) come with a pre-populated red or green pushbutton with a built in LED to illuminate the button and the Qwiic Button Breakout leaves the button unpopulated so you can choose your own tactile button.

Using the Qwiic Button is as simple as sending the command button.isPressed() to check the status of the button. In addition to handling status checks and debouncing, the Qwiic Button has a configurable interrupt pin which can be adjusted to activate upon a button press or click. This allows you to trigger specific behavior or functions in your code when the button is used and frees up processing time that would normally be used to constantly poll a button's state.

The Qwiic Button also includes a First-in First-Out (FIFO Queue) which keeps track of when the button was pressed so if you are hosting a game show you can easily keep track of which contestant pressed their button first without needing to constantly poll the buttons!

Required Materials

The Qwiic Button requires a Qwiic-enabled microcontroller:

SparkFun Thing Plus - ESP32 WROOM (Micro-B)

SparkFun Thing Plus - ESP32 WROOM (Micro-B)

WRL-15663
$22.50
13
SparkFun RedBoard Qwiic

SparkFun RedBoard Qwiic

DEV-15123
$21.50
18
SparkFun RedBoard Artemis

SparkFun RedBoard Artemis

DEV-15444
$21.50
10
SparkFun Qwiic Micro - SAMD21 Development Board

SparkFun Qwiic Micro - SAMD21 Development Board

DEV-15423
$22.50
5

And you will also need a Qwiic cable:

Qwiic Cable - 50mm

Qwiic Cable - 50mm

PRT-14426
$0.95
Qwiic Cable - 100mm

Qwiic Cable - 100mm

PRT-14427
$1.50

Qwiic Cable - 500mm

PRT-14429
1 Retired

Qwiic Cable - 200mm

PRT-14428
Retired

Or, if you want to use a microcontroller without a Qwiic connector, you can add one using one of our Qwiic Shields, the Qwiic Adapter board, or adapter cables:

SparkFun Qwiic Adapter

SparkFun Qwiic Adapter

DEV-14495
$1.60
4
SparkFun Qwiic Shield for Arduino

SparkFun Qwiic Shield for Arduino

DEV-14352
$7.50
9
Qwiic Cable - Breadboard Jumper (4-pin)

Qwiic Cable - Breadboard Jumper (4-pin)

PRT-14425
$1.50

Qwiic Cable - Female Jumper (4-pin)

CAB-14988
Retired

Finally, if you are using the Qwiic Button Breakout you'll need to solder a button to the board:

LED Tactile Button - Green

LED Tactile Button - Green

COM-10440
$2.25
Momentary Pushbutton Switch - 12mm Square

Momentary Pushbutton Switch - 12mm Square

COM-09190
$0.55
4
LED Tactile Button- White

LED Tactile Button- White

COM-10439
$2.25
1
LED Tactile Button - Blue

LED Tactile Button - Blue

COM-10443
$2.25

Realistically, you can solder any pushbutton to the Qwiic Button Breakout so long as it fits the button footprint. We have a couple other options available in our Button Category that will work perfectly with the Qwiic Button Breakout.

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.

Button and Switch Basics

A tutorial on electronics' most overlooked and underappreciated component: the switch! Here we explain the difference between momentary and maintained switches and what all those acronyms (NO, NC, SPDT, SPST, ...) stand for.

I2C

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

Processor Interrupts with Arduino

What is an interrupt? In a nutshell, there is a method by which a processor can execute its normal program while continuously monitoring for some kind of event, or interrupt. There are two types of interrupts: hardware and software interrupts. For the purposes of this tutorial, we will focus on hardware interrupts.

Qwiic Shield for Arduino & Photon Hookup Guide

Get started with our Qwiic ecosystem with the Qwiic shield for Arduino or Photon.