PineBook Pro Stemma QT connector for Hardware Hacking

[ssfrfr@]

I’ve been working on shrinking the 21MB Manjaro kernel, mostly by disabling drivers for hardware you can’t easily install on a PBP, and once I’ve figured that all out I’ll put that up on the wiki.

However, that made me think about the plethora of little I2C sensors - IMUs, GPS, pressure, light - that are available now.

Stemma QT (https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-a...-stemma-qt) is a 4-pin JST SH (1.0mm pitch) connector, which exposes I2C.  It’s possible to level-shift it so that one can safely plug in 5v and 3.3v hardware.

Putting one (or two, with one poking out a new hole in the case) on the audio daughtercard would allow the solderless addition of pretty much any I2C hardware, and thus increases the hackability of the PineBook Pro . . .

I’d buy a new audio daughterboard to add this functionality, because while I could trace the I2C bus and tap it it would be a pain and fragile.  Having a proper connector makes adding a sensor or two almost easy, instead of terribly daunting.

[Arwen]

The original design of the Pinebook Pro did not take in to account hardware hacking or expansion. (Except for the NVMe slot.)

There are several things that may be added in the future. Some requiring new main or small boards, (the daughter card is called small board for PBP). Here are are some of the potential expansion;

- IC2
- 2 x USB 2.0, (from an internal hub that has 2 free)
- Socket existing SPI flash
- Different M.2 boards, perhaps with eMMC slots or UFS card slots. Or different WiFi or Cell-MODEM cards.
- Extra SPI flash
- Different speaker options

Perhaps a newer version of the main or small board will be made with some of the options.

[xmixahlx]

there is a pinebookpro defconfig.