Rather than just using breakouts for prototyping, I’m thinking of how to non-permanently mount pimoroni breakouts in panels for various projects in custom handheld pi zero housings. I don’t want to solder headers or pins into the breakouts, I’d like them to be interchangeable between projects, hats and sockets.
The breakout garden phat and hats are good, as are the flying dupont cable plugs and socket sets. I’ve not tried if flying leads to a few breakouts using the mounting holes would work nicely, but I suspect it’ll get messy and relatively bulky. So I wondered if anyone has made, or considered using, flat mounted sockets on custom “hat-like” control panel boards instead of vertical as on the phat/hats?
I’m not terribly impressed that the breakouts get in the way of each other and the trackball and haptic buzzer are crying out to be mounted flat and solidly to a board to give good control and feedback.
If you got the size correct, you could theoretically cut the existing sockets vertically in half and then mount a breakout ‘flat’ against a board using half a socket. However, not all breakouts have components on the back and the sizes might not be so universal for a nice snig fit in all cases, without “ram-pack” wobble!!
Could that sort of mounting work?
I don’t know if there are other kinds of pcb edge connectors that would work for flat mounting?
Has anyone done this for Arduino or non-pi projects?
Also, any plans for standard 7-way SPI breakout plugs and sockets? The flow meter seems also like a candidate for being mounted somewhere else than on the hat.
I usually just solder male headers on the breakout board. Then use female to female jumper wires to connect them to another male header on a Proto Hat or Proto Zero. I swap out all the single shells for one 5 pin or 4 pin shell. It makes it easier to plug and unplug without mixing up which wire goes where.
Then I mount my breakouts with stand offs or just nuts and bolts.
I’d love to get my hands on the breakout garden Hat without all the vertical sockets on it. I’m almost tempted to buy one and just remove them. You could then mount your breakout laying down flush with the Hat. Just use a male header in the solder pads where the socket used to be.
I’m thinking you could use this to flip your trackball 90 degrees and have it lay flat.
Solder the trackball to the male header and trim off the pins with wire cutters. Then plug that into the Breakout Garden hat. How stable it will be I don’t know?