Touch pHat and GPIO pin 12

Liking the look of the new phat a lot, but i have one question/suggestion. Is there any way to break out gpio pin 12 (GPIO #18) on it?

My thinking is to couple up on board control plus an IR remote via pin 12 (plus ground and 3.3v) for an all round media box project.

I have something very similar set up on a breakout board using an IR diode plus some push buttons but this would be much nicer if it can include the diode too.

Any easy way to do it, or chance of a pin breakout?

just use a stacking header, or tap into the connection at the top of the pHAT.

Could work, but would be rather fragile i think.

No way to physically secure the diode in place other than the solder joints.

In my case it’s a traveling device (pi zero running LibreElec Kodi) and i think the for wouldn’t last a trip or two.

a breakout, typically is a set of male pins, essentially the same as a stacking header.

You could configure something like a mini Black HAT Hacker to switch to use a female header on the ‘breakout’, but you’d still be sticking jumper wires into some loose connectors - in my view soldering in place would beat either solution in term of solidity any day of the week, but YMMV.

The current board is a protozero, so everything is securely soldered in place (although the diode has an annoying habit of bending backwards).

But being home brew it doesn’t look as nice as your new board. Will give it some thought.

Thanks for the ideas though.

Kapton tape the bottom of your Pi and solder a ProtoZero to the bottom of it, populated with any additional components you need on the bottom side :D

Thanks Phil.

Unfortunately there’s already a USB hub board underneath linking via pogo pins. But a protozero under the touch pHat could be an idea, although a bit wasteful for just 3 connections.

Further thought required here methinks…

You could, potentially, hack down a protozero or similar and sandwich it on the top. Or just solder directly to the GPIO pins underneath the Pi and onto a small piece of protoboard/stripboard.

Yes, make a little daughter board on top to pins 12, 17 and one of the ground pins. That has potential…

Will need to look in more detail at a spare protozero and see how hackable they are.

Or is a little dedicated daughter board a potential addon product?