Journey to the Center of the Catalog – Shield Stacking Headers for Arduino
We have like 2000 products now. Adafruit’s not just a SpokePov, a MintyBoost, and three people like it used to be. And while there’s probably some guy named, like, Kyle who’s memorized every PID, every product name, and everything we’ve ever discontinued, we don’t expect all of you to be as awesome as Kyle is. That’s why we’re starting this – because there are products in our catalog that are still exciting, still useful, and are still things that you probably want to add to your shopping carts but just don’t know it yet. We’re calling it Journey to the Center of the Catalog – because we like Jules Verne and we like to pretend, sometimes, that Adafruit’s a giant unstoppable volcano with a bunch of really cool dinosaurs inside of it. It just so happens that today’s dinosaurs are…
We heard once that, in the 4th millennium B.C., some guy asked the person who invented the wheel that question. The person who invented the wheel’s answer, we were told, was something like “well it’s not actually that simple – it required engineering and innovation and this thing called mathematics that probably hasn’t been discovered yet and blah blah blah…” on and on and on until the guy got called away to go fight a minotaur or something.
Cool story, right? We mention it because stacking headers are sort of like the wheel to the Arduino civilization – meaning this thing that’s incredibly simple, incredibly useful, but still so brilliant you’re amazed they didn’t exist before the day they started existing.
What are they for? Stacking.
You put the headers on top of your Arduino and then you can add shields like our Protoshield or our Motor Shield or our Proto-Screwshield (pictured above) to get your Arduino doing all the cool things you want it to. Our set includes 1x 10-pin header, 2x 8-pin headers, 2x 6-pin headers, and one 2×3 header.
The legs are all 10.5mm long, so after PCB thickness (1.7mm) you have a height of 8.8mm – just enough to clear the Arduino’s USB-B connector. They’re also fully compatible with shields designed for Arduino R3 and the Leonardo. For shields that don’t use the 10-pin header or 2×3 header, use the 6 or 8 pin ones.
Really, the possibilities are endless. On their own, they’re just headers with longer legs just like how the wheel was just something that rolled. But then you put an axel in the center of a wheel and a board on top of it and you get a cart. And once you get a cart you start building better roads. And once you get better roads you start meeting far off civilizations. And once that starts happening – oof, sorry, we have to go fight a minotaur.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!
Python for Microcontrollers – Adafruit Daily — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: A Fabulous Year for Python on Hardware and Much More! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi
EYE on NPI – Adafruit Daily — EYE on NPI Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey
