Stacking a Touch pHAT and blinkt! on Pi Zero W

Discussion Raspberry Pi
1

Hello All,

I am working on a project where I want to have both the Touch pHAT and the blinkt! attached to my Pi Zero W at the same time. I have seen other topics mentioning that I can stack them without adding any other boards, but I have two real questions about this:

  1. I looked at the pinout.xyz and it seems that they would be compatible, but the truth is that I am not 100% sure how to read the site. They share the same power, but it looks like everything else is separate.

  2. Second things is how to physically stack them. I have a hammer header on the Pi Zero W itself and the pins are long enough to hold the Touch pHAT and the blinkt! on it, but the Touch pHAT doesn’t seem to get the connection well, just being sandwiched between the blinkt!'s female connector and the base of the header. Is there some other way to ensure valid connections?

I’d appreciate any help with this.

Thanks,
Scott

2

hi -

  1. yes, that is correct, they use different sets of pins (well, even if 2 add-ons were to both use the i2c pins that wouldn’t necessarily mean they are incompatible)

  2. I would expect the blinkt to be the potentially flaky part of the setup, without a dedicated stacking header, like those.

3

I saw those stacking headers, but I still don’t get how to make the Touch pHAT have good contact, do I just thread it through the pins and put the blinkt! on top? That is sort of what I have tried already, but the Touch pHAT isn’t necessarily found unless I make sure it is at an angle (so the pins touch the contacts).

I think I am missing something.

4

The Touch pHAT definitely needs to be soldered at some point. I broke out the pins on my Explorer pHAT for the same reason:

IMG_20160729_190618.jpg2851×2138 1.45 MB

5

Wow, so you managed to solder the Explorer from the top?! Not sure that my soldering skills are up to that, though I was kind of afraid that my be the answer. :-p

6

It’s essentially the same as soldering the pHAT normally, you just want to avoid dragging too much solder up the pin - sure you’ll be fine :)

7

I will definitely need practice, I had a hard time with my standard header into pi (different one for which I didn’t have the Hammer Head). I think I touched the pins too long and they melted the plastic of the base, so they are no longer straight. :-(

IMG_5485.jpg2458×1558 561 KB

Might help if I get a smaller solder tip as well. The one I have is really large.

Scott

8

yes, it would work exactly as @major_tomm pic with Explorer. Because there are no delicate components in the way it really is not a difficult soldering job, just approach each row of the header from their respective side.

That said, the solderless header should be fine for a Touch pHAT but I am personally skeptical you can plug a blinkt on top and it making contact. Your report is opposite to what I expect though, so maybe I am not picturing correctly how you assembled the lot… maybe some pic can help (though, I would expect you’ll need a stacking header, or a mini Black HAT Hacker).

9

oh hold on! you need a female header on the pHAT too, you are not just dropping it onto the Pi header right?

10

Yes I am just dropping it on - and was thinking that this might be a problem, but I couldn’t see how to put a female on the pHAT and then be able to put the blinkt! on after that

11

Here is what I was trying to do in images (well just one image since I am a new user and can only post one per post):

IMG_5488.jpg4032×3024 1.46 MB

12

Here is another one that is helpful I think:

IMG_5487.jpg4032×3024 1.43 MB

13

Whilst you probably can solder the Touch pHAT directly to the Pi, I’d say the Blinkt connection might be a bit spotty with so little pin left over?