Hello All
First time here, so please be patient if I do something wrong that is unique to this forum.
I am asking about creating a hat for a Raspberry Pi 4 that does not need header pins. I have a gap in my stack of hats that can hold the board I need, and I have seen sold products by Pimoroni and Sparkfun that are called shims that slot onto the Raspberry Pi header.
I don’t know if there is a layout for this type of connector already (I doubt it), but I’ll say this: there’s no way that a friction-fit (non-soldered) connection is going to be reliable. You need spring contacts to allow for board movement and tolerances. If you don’t mind soldering it, then it’s a pretty easy design, although a horizontal mount is going to require a very small diameter router bit, which might limit your PCB manufacturing choices.
What would you recommend for this then? I don’t mind soldering it, but I do want some flexibility early on when testing. I really do not want to put another header pin set on it (stacking header block) as it would become really tall for no real reason
That looks interesting, I’ll have to read more about them. Any idea where I could find the 2x20 header kicad shape? This may be very obvious but my mind is currently firing on half a cylinder
Not certain what you mean by “kicad shape” but assuming you mean footprint then look at “Connector_PinSocket_2.54mm:PinSocket_2x20_P2.54mm_Vertical”
Thank you. More research also led me to find that File > New Project from Template includes Raspbery pi headers and hats as a starter as well. Thank you all for your help finding this