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Build Guide

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Tom edited this page Dec 23, 2017 · 2 revisions

For anyone working through this build: Some high quality build photos at each step would be super useful! Please contribute these if you are able.

This guide will cover building the actual device. It's called sparklestick because it's around the size of a stick of gum, and it sparkles!

You'll need the following, at a minimum (links go to Adafruit, but these should be available from a variety of distributors). Prices are current in USD as of the time of writing.

In total, you're looking at under $40.

The Button SHIM is kind of optional, although the software has been built assuming it's present, and making the stick interactive is pretty awesome. What blows my mind about the Pi Zero W is that the computational core of the device is one of the cheaper parts of the build! It's really amazing what the Raspberry Pi Foundation has been able to do here. But the Scroll pHAT HD is worth it - it's an awesome piece of kit! It looks very attractive, pairs perfectly with the Pi Zero, and gets bright.

Side note: You could make the project even cheaper by getting the plain old Pi Zero (no Wifi) for around $5. However, this all but prevents you from using resin.io for deployment (recommended), unless you plug in some kind of network whenever you want to update the software.

Equipment

You'll need a couple of tools to do this right:

  • A fine tipped soldering iron and solder.
  • Diagonal cutters (e.g. these) for trimming excess header material.

Build

This project will be permanently soldered together, but the first thing you'll want to do is set everything in place, to ensure it all fits together and you have all the parts oriented correctly.

Take the Pi Zero, and insert the pin header into the GPIO holes, with the long pins facing towards the underside, through the holes. This is the reverse of how they would normally go, but it will make sense in a minute.

Place the Button SHIM over the Pi Zero, with the buttons facing away from the Pi, on the top side of the SHIM. Be careful here! If the buttons are "upside down", they won't function. The LED pixel should be visible on the top of the SHIM, and the square solder pad should line up with the one on the Pi. Confusingly, the letters on the buttons will seem to be ordered incorrectly (E through A) - this seems to just be a minor design flaw of the device, but doesn't affect operation.

Finally, place the Scroll pHAT HD over the Button SHIM, with the LED side obscuring the Pi beneath. Check that everything meshes well together. You want the pins of the header to be just flush with the Scroll pHAT HD board, and the board itself to be able to lie parallel to the Pi underneath in both directions. It's ok if it's slighty raised above (i.e. not touching) the Pi.

If everything fits, it should look a lot like this:

Now, we're ready to start soldering! Take off the two HATs, so you're just dealing with the Pi and header. Solder the header to the Pi (again, with the long pins through the GPIO holes). If you haven't soldered a header before, check out a guide like this one from Pimoroni.

Now place the Button SHIM in its position. This part of the build requires the most care with soldering. If too much solder is applied, then the Scroll pHAT HD will not be able to sit perfectly flush with the Button SHIM. It's recommended that you only solder the pins that the SHIM actually uses, as per its pinout diagram. Ensure you are orienting the pins correctly by checking for the square solder pad and aligning it at top left. Use a tiny dab of solder for each pin - just enough solder to be sure there is a connection.

If you want to double-check that you have a solid connection with the SHIM, you can stop at this point and try installing and running some of the examples from the Button SHIM's Python library on the Pi.

Next we need to install the Scroll pHAT HD. While optional, I'd recommend applying a few layers of electrical tape to the mini HDMI port on the Pi, and some small pieces of foam tape (something like these) to the micro USB ports. This both ensures that no shorts can occur between the pHAT and Pi, but also provides some padding for structural integrity, and makes it easier to get the pHAT to sit perfectly parallel over the Pi. You can see the foam tape in this image:

Once you're ready, seat the Scroll pHAT HD over the Button SHIM, get it lined up, and carefully solder onto the corner header pins to fix it in position. Ideally, the pins will sit flush with the pHAT board, and you'll get very neat solder contacts. Again, you could choose to just solder the necessary pinouts here, but I opted to solder everything for a consistent look and increased build strength.

The final step is to trim off the excess length in the header pins on the underside of the Pi. Use your diagonal cutters to trim flush with the Pi (be careful of flying pins!) You may also want to add some insulation such as electrical tape to some of the exposed electrical contacts of the device, depending on where you will place it.

Now you should be good to go! Head on over to the GitHub page for a guide to installing and running the software.

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