I bought a few 4 digit 14 segment displays thinking i’d be able to use a breadboard, some wires and a bit of coding to get them working. I somewhat overestimated my ability to get things running.
Subsequently I have bought a single Qwiic Alphanumeric Display (purple edition!) and it works beautifully.
However, I wonder if there is the possibility of the base board being made available with just headers so that I could easily change the on-board LCD (I have R, G, B and white ones to play with)
Well, for the breadboarding: in theory you can but you do need to use an LED driver of some sort on the breadboard too…and a control scheme/protocol. Note the the qwiic version’s schematic https://cdn.sparkfun.com/assets/c/7/2/8/a/Qwiic_Alphanumeric_Display.pdf that shows what we use to drive the bare 14-segment display
Eh. you could de-solder the purple display and solder on some 2.54mm Female headers to the board side and swap them out that way
Just be sure to orient them correctly when swapping!
For female headers, you want these. The pins on the LED displays will fit right in them.
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Ok, I also just double checked the operating/forward voltages of those, and everything looks swappable EXCEPT WHITE (2.4v max)…it looks like all other colors we carry are 3.6v max (as is the purple, which is the driver board you have)
Note: if you got 1 more qwiic alphanumeric board you could get one of the lower voltage units so you can have a low-voltage swappable one too
Thank you for your reply. I had thought about the de-soldering option but unfortunately I don’t have surgeon’s hands. The soldering on the board is very small and precise/neat. I worry that I’d destroy the board/chip in the process of de- or re-soldering hence the question as to whether SparkFun have considered producing a board with headers to allow easy swapping.
It’s interesting that one colour has a different max voltage - that does “complicate” things !
I went back to the supplier website and their datasheets suggest that it’s the Red LED device that operates in the 1.8-2.4V range whereas the others in the set of colours operate between 2.7V and 3.6V.
Ah - good catch
Just buy all the qwiic versions! 
