Review
FULL PHAT magpi.cc/2ku3dfc
£8 / $11 Maker Says Connect two pHATs to your Pi and still use spare GPIO ports RasPiO
FULL PHAT Have double the fun by plugging in two pHATs at once. By Phil King
ou may recall that we reviewed Pimoroni’s pHAT Stack last issue. The latter is a monster of a breakout board that enables the connection of up to five pHAT boards – or three HATs – to one Raspberry Pi. While it works very well, we did mention that it might seem like overkill to some people. In which case the Full pHAT might well prove a more practical alternative with its smaller form factor. Fitting neatly on top of the Raspberry Pi, it allows you to connect two pHATs, or a pHAT and a HAT. Well, it does once assembled. You first need to solder on a female stackable 40-pin header, and a male header. Two nylon standoffs are also supplied to provide a secure fit on top of the Raspberry Pi. For a low-profile project, you could even solder the Full pHAT directly to a Pi Zero and eliminate the main header altogether.
Y
Related PHAT STACK
Need to connect more add-on boards to your Pi? The pHAT Stack lets you use up to five pHATs, three HATs, or a combination.
£14 / $16 magpi.cc/2mcr2Gt
76
March 2018
The GPIO ports (all bar GPIO 26) are broken out twice more in two single rows of holes, labelled with special functions (e.g. SDA, SCL, Tx, Rx) where applicable. In addition, there are three holes for 5V, 3V3, and GND. So there’s plenty of scope for soldering wires directly, or via added pins, to connect various electronic components and sensors. The two main GPIO headers are also clearly labelled with their GPIO numbers, which is a nice touch and reminiscent of RasPiO’s Portsplus key-ring.
Spare ports
Once assembled and mounted on the Raspberry Pi, we found it easy to swap pHATs and HATs in and out – such as a Micro Dot pHAT and Unicorn HAT HD to simultaneously show scrolling text messages and a graphical display. As with the pHAT Stack, however, one caveat is that
you need to avoid combining two add-on boards that use the same GPIO pins (unless they're I2C with different addresses). Again, Pimoroni’s ‘pHAT Stack configurator’ online tool (magpi.cc/2BH6TSc) comes in handy here – assuming you’re using Pimoroni boards. Alternatively, you can just check which pins they use at pinout.xyz.
Last word Fitting snugly on top of the Raspberry Pi, the Full pHAT is useful for combining two pHATs (or a pHAT and HAT) and also as a breakout board for projects. To this end, the clear labelling of all the GPIO ports is a great help, as is the provision of two extra rows of holes.
raspberrypi.org/magpi