Box Header Platform for connecting projects to Arduino

By far one of the most annoying things about prototyping with Arduino has been connecting and disconnecting projects to and from the board. I would connect up a breadboard to the various pins using individual wires. That worked fine until I wanted to disconnect it, which would happen all the time. Perhaps I had to wait on a part to arrive. Or maybe I got stuck, or just bored, and wanted to work on something else. Just disconnecting a project from Arduino would disrupt the whole thing, and then I’d have to remember how to wire it up again. This was painful.

So I created a little platform for myself to make connections to the Arduino easy. Details posted at Arduino Box Header Platform.

I know exactly what you mean!
On my Mega I have a DFRobot prototyping shield, I put a 32 pin box header on it and use an old PC floppy cable to connect to pro-typing boards or breadboards.

hey, great idea! I usually use something like the RBBB which plugs right into a breadboard but yours is very cute.

Awesome, you beat me to it.

I have a different version which uses one 30-40 wire ribbon cable to pass all arduino connections to the breadboard. It's being manufactured right now! ]:smiley:

I call it phi-connect. No pics yet but will certainly post.

I do have a couple of features I didn't see on your board though. :wink:

This kind of board should replace the original proto-shield as a much more expendable way of prototyping->permanent installment. You can solder the header to a perf-board. Hope we both make Arduinoists happier! :grin:

liudr:
Awesome, you beat me to it.
...
This kind of board should replace the original proto-shield as a much more expendable way of prototyping->permanent installment. You can solder the header to a perf-board. Hope we both make Arduinoists happier! :grin:

Thanks! :slight_smile: Yeah, combining with a perfboard is certainly a direction one could go in. I prefer the "one job, one tool" mindset, which is why I made it further stackable. If I wanted a perfboard, I'd just stack it on top.

It's interesting about the 30-40 wire cable... You can see I have a 20-pin header, but I found that everything I've wanted to connect so far only uses the 10-pin connectors. So on the other PCB's I got back, I have never even soldered on the 20-pin.