Operation Manual

The design and layout of the Prototyping Pi Plate will be familiar to anyone who has used an Arduino microcontroller. An add-on
board with the same footprint as the target device, designed to connect to on-board headers and sit above the surface of the
original board is a common sight in the Arduino world, where such add-on boards are known as shields. The idea for the
Prototyping Pi Plate, in fact, comes from Adafruit’s self-designed Protoshield add-on for the Arduino.
As a full-coverage add-on board, the Pi Plate is designed to connect to the GPIO header and cover the entire surface of the Pi.
This positioning above the Pi can make it difficult to access the DSI video output and MIPI CSI-2 camera input connectors,
although longer ribbon cables should route beneath the Pi Plate without trouble. If you’re planning to use an add-on camera
module or DSI-connected display, be sure to check the length of ribbon cable provided before planning your project around the
Pi Plate.
The prototyping surface of the Pi Plate is split into two, with both halves offering through-hole construction in common 2.54 mm
spacing. The first half of the prototyping surface is set up in a similar way to a breadboard: copper tracks on the underside link
rows together, and a central bus in the middle provides common power and ground connectivity. The second half of the
prototyping surface does not have such tracks, allowing more custom circuits to be constructed. Overall, the surface provided
for circuit creation is significantly larger than that of the Slice of Pi, making the Pi Plate suitable for more-complex projects. It
additionally offers an SOIC surface, designed for soldering a surface-mount component for parts that aren’t available in through-
hole format.
Thanks to its large size, you can also use the Pi Plate with a quarter-size breadboard (sold in the Adafruit shop as a “tiny
breadboard”). This small, two-section breadboard comes with a self-adhesive foam backing and can be stuck to the top of the
Pi Plate over the prototyping area (see Figure 13-5). Doing so means that it’s impossible to use the prototyping area to make a
permanent circuit, but the combination offers a self-contained add-on for rapid temporary prototyping of smaller circuits.
As with the Slice of Pi, the Prototyping Pi Plate is at heart a basic device. The kit contains no active components, but simply
headers, terminals and the board itself. As a result, it provides little extra protection for the Pi’s GPIO ports beyond making it
more difficult to accidentally short-circuit two connections. Unlike the Slice of Pi, the Pi Plate provides access to all 26 of the
Pi’s GPIO header pins—meaning that you could accidentally connect things to the pins marked as Do Not Connect on the
GPIO header diagram (see Chapter 12, “Hardware Hacking”). As with connecting things to these pins directly, this is
inadvisable and can result in permanent damage to the Pi.
Figure 13-5: A Pi Plate with a quarter-size breadboard