Hi,
Forgive what may be a stupid question: I’m new to messing around with hardware.
I’ve bought a Galactic Unicorn and have enjoyed playing with the software. I’ve set it up to give me the next train time from my local station with some nice background effects. I’m thinking of adding another couple of scripts. One to get the weather. Another for a clock. Maybe also a temperature sensor in due course.
My eventual plan is to put it on the wall, probably battery powered.
The problem with this is that I don’t think the buttons on the back are very accessible if it is wall mounted. They also aren’t very intuitive if you don’t know they are there, so I was wondering if I could add some external ones which would be more “button like” and forward facing. Probably just 3 or 4
There are lots of tutorials and boards for doing this with a Pico W but they all seem to assume that you have access to all the headers, which obviously isn’t possible in the Galactic Unicorn.
From reading the documents about the Galactic Unicorn, I think the only way of extending the hardware is via the QW/ST connectors but I cannot work out whether any boards are available which have a few buttons and something which plugs into one of those. Or whether it would be straightforward to make.
Might anyone point me in the right direction?
Thanks!
Jacob
Hmm, this maybe? It has 5 buttons, and the wheel. Could be connected with a QWICC cable.
RGB Encoder Wheel Breakout (pimoroni.com)
Or this, with your own buttons / switches. You’ll have to do some wiring though.
IO Expander Breakout (pimoroni.com)
Thanks for the answer!
Hmm, this maybe? It has 5 buttons, and the wheel. Could be connected with a QWICC cable.
RGB Encoder Wheel Breakout (pimoroni.com)
That looked like the simplest but it seems slightly overkill for what I was after.
Or this, with your own buttons / switches. You’ll have to do some wiring though.
IO Expander Breakout (pimoroni.com)
I don’t mind doing some soldering but I can’t work out how I would connect that to the Galactic Unicorn since I think the QW/ST connector is 4 pin whereas that seems to have 5 inputs. Could I just skip the “int” header (since that seems to be the one missing from Qwiic) and solder the four wires to the other ones?
I can’t guaranty the IO Expander will work without the Int? I would think so if all your doing is running button pressed code. I have one, and may be able to do some tests with it. I’ll have to go find it first, lol.
This adapter will save you some hand wiring.
STEMMA QT / Qwiic to Breakout Garden Adapter (pimoroni.com)
The button example ran just fine on my ioexpander, with it connected via the QWICC connector.
pimoroni-pico/micropython/examples/breakout_ioexpander/button.py at main · pimoroni/pimoroni-pico (github.com)
I tested it on my Pico Inventor. It’s flashed with the Pimoroni 120.5 Pico W uf2. I used the adapter I linked to above.
I have a Galactic Unicorn, the Pico Inventor was just sitting on my desk doing nothing so I used it instead. It shouldn’t matter, they both have the Qwicc connector. As far as the code is concerned its a PICO W.
If I was doing this, I’d go with the Encoder Wheel breakout. Thats just me though. It looks awesome, IMHO, and the hookup is a breeze with one cable. I’d probably set the LED ring up as an analog clock. A Red dot for the Hour hand, and Green for Minutes.
Thank you for all of this. I am tempted to take your advice about the Encoder Wheel. I presume the quality is pretty high and I have been delighted with just how good the Galactic Unicorn looks. I think I might give it a week or so and see how usage beds in before taking a decision.
I don’t have an Encoder wheel. I have added it to my wish list though.
A lot of the gismo’s I’ve bought here I set up with a function in mind. And then as time goes by I add functions too them, change what it does, or how it does it. It’s kind of fun that way.
I haven’t had a lot of defects in what I’ve bought here. And I got prompt service, and quick replacements with no hassle when I did have something that didn’t work right.