I have a Sparkfun Red Board and I want to stack on a shield. To do this I bought a set of Stackable Headers. With the stackable headers installed, there is a problem when I connect the shield to the Red Board. The pins of the shield seat “too far” into the female header of the Red Board. This causes the seated shield to sit at an angle. The angle is caused by the power barrel connector on the Red Board which is now “too high”.
This problem does not occur when I connect the shield to an official Arduino Uno board. With the Uno board the male pins of the shield do not seat as deeply into the female header of the Uno. As a result, the shield sits higher, it is not crooked (as with the Red Board), and the shield sits just on top of both the barrel connector and the USB-B connector.
I bought the shield and a set of stackable headers from Adafruit. Since the Red Board is supposed to be compatible with the Uno, I didn’t expect to encounter a problem. Did I make a mistake in expecting this level of compatibility?
When the shield is seated on a Red Board, the Red Board and shield are separated by about 0.37" (top of Red Board to bottom of shield). When the shield is seated on the Uno, the Uno and the shield are separated by about 0.45" The USB-B (on the Uno) and barrel connectors (on both boards) extend about 0.43" above the board.
I think the “fix” for this is that the male pins on the stackable headers need to be longer, so as to seat deep into the Red Board (deeper than they do in the Uno) and still hold the shield high enough to clear the barrel connector.
The male pins of the stackable headers from Adafruit extend approx 0.44" from the bottom of the plastic to the end of the pins.
Are the male pins on the Sparkfun stackable headers for Arduino shields longer?
Any suggestions on what I can do about this “unstackability” with the Red Board?