Leave the breadboard behind and utilize a 4-pin JST connector to quickly interface development boards with sensors, LCDs, relays and more.
See Qwiic ProductsThe Qwiic Connect System is designed to keep your projects moving.
Qwiic cables (4-pin JST) plug easily from development boards to sensors, shields, accessory boards and more, making easy work of setting up a new prototype.
There's no need to worry about accidentally swapping the SDA and SCL wires on your breadboard. The Qwiic connector is polarized so you know you’ll have it wired correctly every time, right from the start.
It’s time to leverage the power of the I2C bus! Most Qwiic boards will have two or more connectors on them, allowing multiple devices to be connected.
Introducing Qwiic Micro, our smallest boards yet.
Each Qwiic Micro board includes one Qwiic Connector as well as a single standoff hole which reduces the size of a normal Qwiic board by more than a third. Qwiic Micro boards measure in a minuscule 0.75in. x 0.30in (19.05mm x 7.62mm).
See Qwiic Micro BoardsCheck below to answer any questions you may have about using the Qwiic Connect System.
Absolutely. Just call it a Qwiic connector. It’s free! SparkFun encourages the use of Qwiic in silk on a PCB, in the schematic, and in product descriptions. Put the logo near the connector so it’s obvious what the connector is for.
The requirements to say that your board has Qwiic:
No. Black is the preferred color but we understand that white is the commonly available and cheaper color. If you’re producing a small volume of boards (<100), white is great. If you’re producing a large number of boards, consider using a black connector.
Probably not. The Stemma system supports both 5V and 3.3V. Use the Qwiic nomenclature if the connector or board supports 3.3V only. Use the Qwiic/Stemma nomenclature if the connector or board supports 5V and 3.3V on the I2C bus. Pimoroni’s BME688 is a good example.
There are two types: general Qwiic cables and flexible Qwiic cables. Both are adequate and compatible. We recommend flexible Qwiic interconnect cables for the best user experience.
The list is rapidly growing but here are a few:
The very conservative max current on a Qwiic cable is 226mA[1]. If you want to push it, 28AWG is good for up to 1.4A for chassis wiring “isolated, unbundled wire in free air, as per the Handbook of Electronic Tables and Formulas for American Wire Gauge.” We wouldn’t recommend pushing the cables to 1.4A, but hundreds of mA should be fine.
All Qwiic cables have the following color scheme and arrangement:
The Qwiic board connector is part #: SM04B-SRSS-TB(LF)(SN) or equivalent. If you plan to incorporate a Qwiic connector on your own project we generally encourage using a black connector, but any color will work.
The cable connector is part #: SHR-04V-S or equivalent. Here is an assembly drawing of Qwiic cable showing the pinout and wire colors.
We deliberately chose four conductors to increase usability of the interconnecting cables, minimize the cost of the connectors and limit the PCB footprint. All boards with extra pin options (such as interrupts, address selection, power save mode, etc.) will have those pins broken out to 0.1" holes, so the end user can add extra connections as needed.
I2C stands for inter-integrated circuit, and we’ve got a tutorial dedicated to it here. The bus was designed to communicate between ICs on a printed circuit board, so it wasn’t really designed to go long distances. That said, we’ve successfully communicated with sensors and boards via I2C over 1 meter (~4 ft).
The fastest and easiest way to extend the range of your I2C communication bus is to use the Differential I2C Breakout. The breakout uses NXP’s PCA9615 IC, which converts the two default I2C signals into four differential signals, two for SCL and two for SDA. The differential signals are sent over an Ethernet cable, which attaches to the breakout through the on-board RJ-45 connectors. The differential signaling allows the I2C signals to reach distances of up to 100ft while still maintaining their signal integrity!
We may implement a DC buck/boost board in the future, but for now Qwiic only supports 3.3V boards. Currently over 90 percent of our I2C products are 3.3V, and the technology market is accelerating this trend.
What if you already have a handful of SparkFun sensors and parts? We have been putting our standard GND/VCC/SDA/SCL pinout on all our I2C boards for many years. This makes it possible to attach a Qwiic Adapter that will get your SparkFun I2C sensor or actuator onto the Qwiic system.
Whether you are looking for help hooking up hardware, or you're just looking for project inspiration, take a look below. We are always trying to expand our library of projects and tutorials, so check back often or fill out the form above to be notified of new content.