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\nWhat is a Breakout Board for Arduino?\n

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\n\nPublisher:\n\nProgramming Electronics Academy\n\n\n
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\nIf you have been learning about Arduino for any amount of time, than you have probably come across the term Breakout Board.Now, you might think, as I did when I first heard about breakout boards, that they were some fixture for...\nIf you have been learning about Arduino for any amount of time, than you have probably come across the term Breakout Board.

Now, you might think, as I did when I first heard about breakout boards, that they were some fixture for practicing your Kung Fu fighting.

In this lesson, we will discuss what breakout boards are, how they can accelerate your Arduino prototyping and some things to look out for when you buy them.

The basic concept of a breakout board is that is takes a single electrical component and makes it easy to use.

Usually the electrical component is an integrated circuit (IC). Integrated circuits, as you may know, have pins on them. The pins on an IC can do a multitude of things, but you usually have pins for supply power, pins for providing a ground, pins for receiving an input and pins for sending an output.

A breakout board \"breaks out\" these pins onto a printed circuit board that has its own pins that are spaced perfectly for a solderless breadboard, giving you easy access to use the integrated circuit.

There are all type of breakout boards - but most of them are for different types of sensors, for example: accelerometers, ultrasonic distance sensors, RFID tag sensors, temperature sensors, pressure sensors, they even have seismic breakout boards for sensing dinosaurs footsteps!

You might be wondering what the difference is between a breakout board and an Arduino shield and that is a good question.

Breakout boards usually have a smaller form factor - they don't need the entire space of an Arduino shield to accomplish their mission.

And while the market for most breakout boards is being driven because of their use with Arduino, since the pin-out of a breakout board is not designed specific to the Arduino headers, it means you could use a breakout board with any other microcontroller development board you want - which gives them a bit more scope than Arduino shields.

Also, since breakout boards generally have fewer components than a shield does, you may find the cost is lower than a comparable Arduino shield. As you may have guessed by now, you can find a breakout board that does essentially the same thing as a shield.

You might be wondering, if breakout boards are only a few components, why not just buy the integrated circuit the breakout board uses, put it on a solderless breadboard yourself, and then hook them up to your Arduino?

That is great question, and there is nothing saying you can't – plenty of people sure do - especially since the components by themselves are often far cheaper to buy alone from an electronics distributor like digikey or mouser.

So why the heck are people buying all these breakout boards?

It essentially comes down to convenience. Let me list the ways a breakout board can help you out, and then you make the call:

Breakout boards can save you space

We have already said that breakout boards use integrated circuits. Integrated circuits are kind of like t-shirts - you can get them in all different sizes.

Usually breakout boards utilize a tiny version of an integrated circuit called an SMD (surface mounted device). The pins on SMD parts are really small - not something you can easily pop into a breadboard. \n
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\nProgramming Electronics Academy\n\n
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2015
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arduino, arduino tutorial, breakout board, break out board, arduino breakout board, sensor, dip, smd, arduino shield, prototyping, rapid prototyping, arduino kit, arduino nano, arduino nano project, arduino nano programming, breakout board mining, breakout board explained, breakout board vs breadboard, arduino projects for beginners, programming for beginners, programming electronics, integrated circuit, dip package, reference material, cheap version, supply voltage, code, easy, components, convenience, pins, buying, find, breadboard, episode, talked, talk, heard, type, thing, types, wondering, essentially, ways, kind, make, reuse
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