Extra-long headers for stacking projects with SMT short fema

General project help for Adafruit customers

Moderators: adafruit_support_bill, adafruit

Please be positive and constructive with your questions and comments.
Locked
User avatar
colinj
 
Posts: 17
Joined: Mon Jun 22, 2015 9:43 pm

Extra-long headers for stacking projects with SMT short fema

Post by colinj »

Howdy,

I really like the Witty Pi 3 Mini and I would like to include it in future projects but I'm running into a slight problem. The Witty Pi 3 Mini is designed to fit over the pins on the Pi and then possibly allow another bonnet or hat to be stacked on top. This is exactly what I would like to do with say a small display. The challenge comes because the Witty Pi 3 Mini uses a SMT GPIO Header for Raspberry Pi HAT - 2x20 Short Female Header and because of the thickness of the SMT Short Female Header the pins for the Pi Zero aren't long enough to allow another hat or bonnet to be attached.

So far the only solution I've been able to come up with is to use some Extra-long break-away 0.1" 16-pin strip male headers with the plastic bit pushed down so there is plenty of room on the top and the pins don't stick out too far from the bottom of the Pi Zero. Unfortunately the Extra-long break-away male headers only seem to come in single row 16 pin strips so it will take some extra work to get enough of them soldered into a Pi Zero and then I have to spend some time trimming the pins to they aren't too long. This is all doable and how I plan to tackle my first particular project and it will work for any project with a Pi Zero. But what about the full size Raspberry Pi?

On a full size Raspberry Pi I don't have the option of soldering in my own headers without removing the old headers first. So what I'm wondering is what other sorts of header options might exist out there to make including a board with the SMT Short Female Header possible? The Witty Pi 3 Mini isn't the only board out there that uses the SMT Short Female Header (or something similar) so the problem isn't limited to just one hat/bonnet/board.

So, group mind, what other options exist for this?

Please and thank you.

User avatar
adafruit_support_mike
 
Posts: 67446
Joined: Thu Feb 11, 2010 2:51 pm

Re: Extra-long headers for stacking projects with SMT short

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

For existing GPIO pins, we suggest stacking header:

https://www.adafruit.com/?q=stacking+he ... =BestMatch

They work extra well for boards with short female header over holes in the PCB. You can probably stack twice as many boards on the pins becase the clearance between boards is smaller.

Locked
Please be positive and constructive with your questions and comments.

Return to “General Project help”