Concern that a UnicornHat doesn't sit correctly on a Raspberry Pi and hence doesn't light up

Noob alert: The UnicornHat I describe below is my first foray into the world of electronics, so highly possible I’ve botched something due to an utter lack of education…

I recently bought a UnicornHat from a Maplin store, and have tried to fit it to a Raspberry Pi. However, the hat doesn’t light up when plugged in and running the sample code. (I went through all of the steps to update the Pi unit and downloaded the UnicornHat Python libraries, as per the tutorials)

From what I observe, the hat is at a very precarious angle: It “leans” downwards, so I’m pretty sure that it can’t make a strong enough connection – see the uploaded image to see what I mean. To this point, I purchased a pair of M2.5 standoffs from Pimoroni which you’ll be able to see in the picture… but to make the matter slightly worse, I think I’ve ordered the wrong size :/.

Seeing as this is my first experience with a hat, I’m not too sure how “snug” the fitting should be, and don’t want to apply so much force that I damage the pins.

As such, any thoughts on where I turn to next?

Thanks in advance.

You should definitely be able to push it on further than that - you shouldn’t be able to see much (if any) of the pins with the HAT correctly placed.

The Unicorn Hat has the pre soldered SMT header. I do believe that is basically a half height header. A bit of the pins will show, it doesn’t go down completely flush. I think it needs to be pushed down a bit more though. You could try putting two more stand offs on the header side and gently screw in the screws.