The Proto Shield

As I mentioned earlier, we’ll use the Proto Shield because it provides a secure and easy way to connect a project to Arduino. You can buy this from the Arduino Store. There are many other Proto Shields available. Any will work, but you may have to make changes to the layout to fit your particular shield. Some shields come with the pins, while others require that you buy them separately.

As you can see, the shield has pins on the bottom that will plug into your Arduino, bringing all the Arduino pins to the shield. The shield has holes next to each Arduino pin for soldering wires, which are connected by the shield to the Arduino pin. To make a connection to an Arduino pin, simply solder a wire into the corresponding hole. This makes a much more reliable connection than poking the wires in to the headers as we’ve done in the past.

Most of the shield is taken up by a grid of tiny holes. They are a little like the holes on the solderless breadboard, in that you can place components and wires anywhere (almost) that you like, but unlike the solderless breadboard, very few connections are provided. You will be making most of the connections by soldering wires directly to the components, usually on the bottom of the board. You can minimize the number of connections you have to wire yourself by making clever use of any busses or other connected holes the shield offers.

NOTE

When using a Proto Shield, or in fact any perforated soldering breadboard, it is common to put the components and wires on top and do the soldering on the bottom. This is especially important with a Proto Shield, as the bottom of the shield will be quite close to the Arduino, and there isn’t much room there. Remember that none of your connections on the bottom of the shield must touch any metal on top of the Arduino, such as components, traces, or the USB port.

If you do have to place any components or wires on the bottom, make sure they are as flat as possible.