If 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. Want to step-up your Arduino skills? Click here to join our 12-part HD Video Course. Basic Concept of a Breakout Board 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, and they even have seismic breakout boards for sensing dinosaurs' footsteps! Breakout Board vs Arduino Shield: What's the difference? 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 t hen hook them up to your Arduino ? That is great question, and there is nothing saying you can't – plenty of people 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. The larger form factor of an integrated circuit, called a DIP (dual inline package) has bigger pins, which fit easily into a breadboard. The DIP package of an IC will be bigger than the SMD form factor. The point, I am getting to here, is that Breakout boards can sometimes save you space which may or may not be important for your project. Breakout Boards are designed for reuse Another thing about using DIP packages is that while the pins are bigger, they are not necessarily sturdy. If you plan to use a DIP component over and over, the usable life of the pins is only so long - the pins on a breakout board however, are heavy duty and designed for reuse. The DIP version on a component may not be available One other issue you may find is that the DIP version of an integrated circuit is not available - as electronics get smaller over time, the demand for larger components is drying up and manufacturers are moving away from even bothering with the DIP package, which ultimately brings you back to a breakout board. Pin labeling on a Breakout board One great feature of breakout boards is that they usually have the pin names of the integrated circuit labeled on the PCB. This makes hooking up the breakout board to your Arduino a cinch, especially when there are a ton of pins. Otherwise, you are looking at the black box of an IC and referencing the datasheet of the integrated circuit to try to figure out which pin is for what. So now that you know some of the benefits of a breakout board, let's talk about a couple things you might want to consider when you are buying them. Good documentation I said this
