1284p/nRF24L01+/proto dev board - Skinny Bob! :-)

Ok, I was going to say a bit about how I've got this board set up for breadboarding.

Referring back to my original post in the this thread, on the PCB rendering you can see the provision for the secondary grid-aligned headers, just inside the standard layout Arduino shield headers.

What I've done here is mount the grid-aligned female pin headers underneath the board, rather than on top of the board, as is the "normal" way with Arduino shield headers.

So I've got two sets of headers, standard "shield" headers going up, grid-aligned header going down. They are connected in parallel, so D0 on one header is connected to D0 on the other, for example.

Pic 1 shows the second set of headers more clearly.

Now, to be usable for breadboarding, we need them to be male, not female, obviously. So, I use "long" male-male pin header as gender changers. (Pics 2 and 3).

When you got the header pins aligned on the breadboard, just press in as normal. When disconnecting the dev board from the breadboard, you may find it convenient to leave the male "gender changer" pins in the breadboard(s), to simplify plugging and unplugging the dev board. (pic 4)

The reason I prefer this set-up to the more obvious method of simply mounting male pins directly on the dev board (which you could certainly do if you prefer) , is because when the dev board is unmounted, the female headers offer less chance of accidental shorts, etc. than exposed male headers. Also, I think the female headers make pretty good "feet" for the dev board, giving some clearance for anything sensitive mounted on the underside of the board. That's true both when it's on or off the breadboard.

The other thing you can do is to connect the dev board to standard proto board, by soldering ordinary male pin headers to the proto board that line up with the female headers. So potentially you can simultaneously grow the Arduino shield stack up and a proto board stack underneath, giving lots of expansion options.

When I start to sell these as kits, I will be offering the second header set with the male-male pins as an option.

So that's the how and why of my breadboarding setup for Skinny Bob! :slight_smile: