Qwiic: A Standard for Rapid Electronics Prototyping

SparkFun QWIIC Pro Kit (Image: SparkFun )

Qwiic is an open connector standard to hook up sensor and actuator boards to a microcontroller board like the Arduino without soldering or breadboards. Use it if you need to quickly connect something that is more complex to talk to than a simple switch, LED, or plain analog sensor. Examples of Qwiic boards include accelerometers, distance sensors, GPS receivers, OLED displays, capacitive touch sensors, and hundreds more. We have some Qwiic components in our Fab Lab.

Qwiic uses the industry-standard I2C bus protocol that allows you to daisy-chain around 100 sensors and actuators to a controller, using only a four-wire cable between each.

Qwiic was introduced by SparkFun, a leading manufacturer of electronics prototyping tools, in 2017, and the small Qwiic connector (4-pin .1 mm JST SH) is included on hundreds of their breakout boards today. Other companies have adopted the standard too (see Adafruit's STEMMA QT, for example). Many of those parts are also available from German SparkFun distributors.

For an introduction and critical review, check out my Qwiic talk at the Aachen Maker Meetup on Jan 19, 2022. For a current overview of available components along with tutorials, see SparkFun's Qwiic start page.

— Prof. Jan Borchers