Little Bird
Button SHIM
Button SHIM gives you five handy, physical buttons and an RGB status LED, and it's HAT and pHAT-compatible! Our SHIM-format boards are designed to slip ne...
Button SHIM gives you five handy, physical buttons and an RGB status LED, and it's HAT and pHAT-compatible!
Our SHIM-format boards are designed to slip neatly onto your Pi's GPIO pins and still allow you to use HATs and pHATs at the same time. Or solder the included female header onto Button SHIM and use it as a standalone board. The buttons and status LED stick out from the top edge of your Pi, making them easy to access.
Use Button SHIM to add physical interaction and visual feedback to your project. It makes the perfect controller for our LED boards like Unicorn pHAT, Mote, and Blinkt! Or why not use it with Four Letter pHAT to turn your Pi into a proper alarm clock, or stopwatch/timer?
Features
- 5x tactile, right-angle push buttons
- Single RGB LED (APA102)
- Buttons driven through an IO expander (TCA9554A)
- Super-slim SHIM-format board
- 0.8mm thick PCB
- Can be used with HATs and pHATs
- Button SHIM pinout
- Compatible with Raspberry Pi 3, 2, B+, A+, Zero, and Zero W
- Python library
- 2x20 female header included
- Requires soldering
Because we've used an IO expander to read the button states and drive the LED, you'll still have full access to all of your Pi's pins, assuming the I2C address (0x3f) doesn't clash.
Software
We've put together a one-line-installer to install the Button SHIM Python library. You'll be up-and-running in a jiffy! There's even a few nice example programs showing how to use Button SHIM to control your Pi's audio, how to control the status LED, and how to mimic key presses.
To install the software, open a terminal and type curl https://get.pimoroni.com/buttonshim | bash to run the one-line-installer.
Our software does not support Raspbian Wheezy.
Notes
- It's important to install Button SHIM the correct way round, with the buttons facing outwards from your Pi, and the buttons on the top (check the photos on this page if you're unsure)
- Board dimensions: 65x13x4.5mm (WxHxD, depth includes buttons)
- Button dimensions: 7x3.5x3.75 (WxHxD)
Jargon buster
Plain-language definitions for the technical terms used above.
- GPIO
- General-purpose input/output pins are microcontroller pins you can set in software to read signals, switch devices on and off, or connect to peripherals. The number of GPIO pins matters because it limits how many buttons, LEDs, sensors, and other parts you can wire directly to the board.
- I2C address
- An I2C address is the number a device uses so a microcontroller can tell it apart from other devices on the same I2C bus. It matters because two devices with the same fixed address may conflict if used together.
- LED
- A light-emitting diode is a small electronic component that lights up when current flows through it in the correct direction. In this kit, LEDs create the flashing effect, so polarity and correct soldering matter for the project to work.
- PCB
- A printed circuit board is a rigid board with copper tracks that connect electronic parts without loose wires. For this kit, the PCBs also form the airplane shape, so they are both the circuit base and part of the finished model.
- pHAT
- A smaller add-on board format for Raspberry Pi, similar in idea to a HAT but usually not full-sized. It matters because pHAT compatibility can affect how neatly a board stacks or fits into a Raspberry Pi project.
- RGB
- Short for red, green and blue, usually referring to an LED that can mix those three colours. It matters because controlling an RGB LED teaches how separate outputs combine to create different colours.
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Related Tutorials
Free guides on learn.littlebird.com.au
