ProtoMate for Raspberry Pi

ProtoMate for Raspberry Pi is a breadboard-style prototyping HAT for any 40-pin Raspberry Pi, designed to allow you to solder your custom breadboard circuit to a HAT-format board - ideal for projects that you want to make more permanent and reliable, moving from loose jumper wires and breadboards to a proper soldered HAT! The ProtoMate has two breadboard-style soldering areas (20x8 and 14x6), i.e. the pads/holes are connected in lanes. Some customers prefer this style, and some prefer the disconnected, perfboard-style. If perfboard-style is more your thing, check out the PerfMate for Raspberry Pi instead. The larger breadboard-style soldering area has a central rail section, split in the middle (feel free to bridge it together), and is surrounded by the Raspberry Pi GPIO. We've essentially split the usual 40-pin header in half, and added a 20x8 breadboard-style area in the middle! The smaller soldering area is great for adding ICs - for example, the MCP23017 fits perfectly. ProtoMate also includes several rails on each side of the board, great for making banks of power pads for your project. These are connected in lanes, indicated by the gold pad bridges and white frames. You can cut the trace bridges between the rail pads if you want to disconnect them from each other. You'll also notice separate I2C and Serial breakout pads, a handy extra we added. Plan your circuit and pins (then check it at least twice!), fit your components to the board, then solder them along with any prototyping wire connections. We include a free GPIO header with the ProtoMate, and recommend soldering the header last to make it easier to get to the components from the underside. Raspberry Pi and mounting hardware (standoffs) not included. Key Features Our product team spent time considering how to make the most out of a HAT-sized board: