set up a Qwiic analogous, but for SPI?

Other Miscellaneous
1

Qwiic is really convenient, but there are times when I2C is too slow.

Do you think that it may be possible to offer something similar to Qwiic, but for SPI? I agree that the SS is a bit annoying, but there could be at least a connector provinding the 5 other wires, with the user only needing to connect the SS themselves?

2

We’ve thought about trying this before but the CS/SS lines make things messy and prevents a plug and play solution. If you’re able to figure out how to overcome that, you’re onto something!

3

I was thinking about this quite a bit lately. What about a solution where you have a “12 pins connectors” (or a number like this):

  • GND

  • PWR

  • MOSI

  • MISO

  • SCK

  • 7 more digital IO pins, chosen among the “boring” pins which do not have too many special capacities. On many modern MCUs (Artemis for example), there are often more pins than we need and / or more pins than broken out on the development boards, so that would not hurt.

Then, what about each “receiving end” have a small “7-pairs-of-pads” array and / or a DIP and / or another way to select which CS/SS to use for which SPI peripheral?

A solution like this would allow fast prototyping for up to 7 SPI devices on the same cable system. That would be enough for very many users. I would love something like this myself, that would be a selling point for my use cases :slight_smile: .

4

I don’t see SparkFun picking up this ball, but we encourage you to give it a try and let us know how it works. You might end up creating a new standard!