prototype shield

If this isnt the right forum to this please direct me to the right one:
I recently purchased a prototype shield and there was the shield and this little white board with pins and sticker underneath.
the prototype shield has many pins how do I know which is which?
and what is the white little board for and how do I use it?

DO you have a picture / URL of what you bought?

  • The pins are identical to the Arduino normally, the white thing is probably a small breadboard in which you can put components to build a sketch without soldering. The sticker can be used to "glue" it to the protoshield.

Is this it?

Sparkfun has some documentations on the website.

It's pretty much a very small perforation board with some 5V and GND and arduino pins brought out. You can do very small projects on them. You solder components on the holes or use the white breadboard to avoid soldering. If you are a newbie or need some decent space to spread out your circuit components, try a decent size solder-less breadboard, that is at least 1,200 tie points in size.

Sparkfun has this one small one:

or this "standard" size one from dipmicro:
http://dipmicro.com/store/ZY-208

its similar to the first one but not the same it only says arduino prototype shield v3.0 on it
but there are MANY MANY pins what are the for?

In this case it's best if you provided a link where you purchased it from. I have a hunch of an ebay knock-offs. Just a hunch.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=160501996064&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT#ht_739wt_905
if its a knock-off does it mean it wont work? because I did manage to hook stuff up to the main pins

tomer1510:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=160501996064&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT#ht_739wt_905
if its a knock-off does it mean it wont work? because I did manage to hook stuff up to the main pins

I didn't say it won't work. It's just that the seller doesn't care to put up enough information about how to use this hardware like the original designer or someone distributing it would do. If I am not mistaken, Lady Ada(adafruit.com) designed her original arduino protoshield, which is sold at several places. The design is in public domain so anyone can make them and sell. You get what you pay for, maybe not so much different on hardware, but pretty obvious on support and documentation, examples etc.

Anyway, if the sparkfun shield is the same (compare pictures), just use the sparkfun documentation. You'll be just fine :slight_smile:
Here is adafruit protoshield tutorial:

http://www.ladyada.net/make/pshield/

Open-source hardware is a dream world for copy cats and knock-offs. They make money while someone else is making the design and supporting users, or even taking blames ]:slight_smile:

Update:

The ebay seller simply copied the texts from sparkfun website word for word:

ok but in general what do the pins do? even on sparkfuns website u can see many pins which pins are to connected where
because the architecture might still be the same

tomer1510:
ok but in general what do the pins do?

They sit there and wait for you to build something. They don't do anything, they're not hooked up to anything, they're space for you to mount and wire up components. That's what makes it a prototype board.

Think of the shield as a post-it. It's blank right now. Unless you write something on it with components and solder, it'll do nothing. Do you have a project in mind, maybe practice on blinking an led?