I see that both this one selected, and the older, retired, retail design contain amber LED devices. Any problem with my swapping them for red and green ones, same style? All of my ideas request those colors instead of the amber ones.

Please consider offering just the bare board. I have the kit, but there are several adapters I'd like to build that don't require the othe bundled components. I considered the LadyAdy board, but I prefer the open pad config of your board.

Second vote for offering the bare board. I bought the kit already, and its great for prototyping, but when you want to make something a bit more permanent, I'd love something with just the components you need.

Strike another one for the board-only option. I'd like to either solder it to the underside of a Pro board, or use stacking headers to have it sandwiched.

This just made my day. Whoever packed these arranged the parts onto the foam in the shape of a space invader! You rock!

One other thing would be to shift everything over just a bit so that the board doesn't sit on top of the Arduino USB port and try to short S2.

So here's YAR (Yet Another Request...you thought I was a pirate, didn't you?) for being able to purchase just the protoboard without the extra kit. Oh, and maybe paint some flowers on it and partner with Celestial Seasonings to send them out in scented cach?s. I have lots of other great ideas, too! :)
But seriously, being able to purchase the bare board by itself would be a very awesome thing.

Not a bad board, there have been some good comments here with regards to possible improvements. Have documented my one here: http://bit.ly/bNCaWS

This doesn't fit on the Arduino Uno. The USB connector prevents the shield from sitting evenly on the Arduino, making some of the connections bad. Not a good product. I wouldn't recommend buying this.

What are the caps for?

My Arduino UNO R3 has a different pin out (6, 8, 8, 10), while this has 6, 6, 8, 8. I'm confused. Is there a different proto shield that I should be looking at? If there is I don't see it.

any plans to have a Leonardo version of this item ?

I used this shield with two 7-segments and two shift registers, it will just fit, but to connect all the wires to connect everything on the bottom side is quit tricky. You can see the shield in action in this project: an Olympic Medal Tracker

Nice little shield, the open pad configuration is ideal, only downside is that the USB connector of the Arduino Uno gets in the way when inserting the board on top of it.

Does this shield currently support the Arduino UNO R3?

Are these boards size compatible with the Arduino Uno? That is, do the output pins line up correctly?

I love the idea of the shield, but a bummer these don't come with a bus for mounting DIP chips and the like without creative soldering.

Another request to offer this as a bare board (with male header pins to couple to Arduino)
As others have said the full kit is great for prototyping, but once you have a final design and you'd like to hardwire it you either have to desolder the headers or buy another full kit. The cost savings of one board would not be much, but if you're producing several copies it adds up quickly.
Also it would be cool if the Eagle files (brd and sch) were available for this board, to use as a starting point for creating custom shields.
Keep up the good work, SFE!

I see that there's 5v and gnd lines on the outside of the protoshield, would it be possible to move the female headers closer to the male pins and move the 5v and gnd lines where the female headers are so they are still exposed when using the mini breadboard?

Great board. I just got it together. Bob Gallup's tutorial was very detailed with great pictures. It looks like the board has been updated since then however. The big difference is now you need two 6 pin male headers not a six and a four.

Simple to assemble. See the photos at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rsbohn/249994855/
Now to build something on it!

When you need tape to prevent short cut, its a clear signal that the design of the board is not optimized. If Sparkfun would have placed the (unnecessary) additional components at the other end of the board, there would have been no problem at all...

Negs if using with the Redboard:

• Bumps up against the DC barrel jack. Leading to wobble (like a chair with a short leg).
• Because it can't sit flush, you can pin through the six ISP pins.
• The current mini breadboard is slightly longer, covering the ISP pins anyway.

I recommend only soldering what you need. I didn't solder anything. The headers fit snugly. God bless you if you solder all of the header pins.

Are the header tails long enough that they plug in ALL THE WAY without the PCB running into the USB header?

I have a proto shield from Makershed that uses too-short tails, caused intermittent connection wasted a bunch of my time

I notice this has a couple of mounting holes right above mounting holes on the arduino, that gap wouldn't happen to be the right length for a standoff would it?

It's actually cheaper if you buy just the parts

You should make a version for people who own the Arduino Leonardo and we would finally have very easy access to the I2C pins.

If I want to order this WITH breadboard, what do I order??

How much current can be drawn from this board, on the ground and 5 volt rails? Are they capable of 4 amps?

It would be nice if you guys added a cap on at least the push button that's pulled high so that it's debounced. Additionally a tristate buffer with enable pulled low on the tx line of the bluesmirf would be nice so that you can actually program the arduino with the bluesmirf attached.

I'm going to buy this since I'm buying a bunch of other stuff from SparkFun and I don't want to wait a week for shipping from Australia or deal with Freetronics' two US distributors. That said, Freetronics Protoshield Pro (http://www.freetronics.com/collections/protoshields/products/protoshield) looks enough larger that I wish I could get it instead. I also prefer the Freetronics version because there's nothing in the way to make it difficult to hang components off the end. SparkFun, please consider stocking Freetronics in the future and/or redesigning your protoboard to be better.

The thing I like about this board is that you just put on the parts you need. Leave off or change the rest. The little green protoboard example in the item pictures is just a beginning...

I assume I can stack one or more unloaded boards below a fully populated board with the Arduino at the bottom of the stack with no interference ? Thus there will only be on set of LED's and one set of switch's . The lower layers in the stack to be used for additional sensors ?

Thanks,

Brian

Wonderful little product. How about setting up pass thru headers on the icsp pins. I wanted to use mine with an Ethernet shield and because of the size of the ethernet shield, this has to go in the middle. The Ethernet shield requires the ICSP pins and even though the holes are there, there aren't any pass thru headers for it. Other than that, great little product.

Not to advertise or anything, but i think that you guys should carry this Protoshield instead. It's much better and it's only downfall is that it can't be stacked with other shields (well, it has to be on the top). Don't get me wrong, I love SFE, but it's a good product.

Hopefully, in the future, I think SparkFun should move the 5V and GND rails just a little bit (approximately the size of one of the holes) left and right so that it will be mini-breadboard friendly. With the mini-breadboard on, it covers those many 5V and GND rails, and it is very inconvenient to have only one 5V pin when you are prototyping. I hope SparkFun implements this into v3.

I have a small question,
What is the capacitors part in this board ?
Why is it there ?

Hey SparkFun:
I'm an experienced EE, and I really love you guys.. I have ordered the Arduino Proto Board from you in the past, but recently thought a mistake had been made when I ordered two more proto boards and they were missing the necessary male header pins for properly mating into the arduino: http://www.sparkfun.com/products/116
The single, inline ones that you all now provide and recommend people solder in, and then also use to mate to the arduino is a re-design flaw. That gauge pin was designed for soldering into a via, and NOT for insertion and removal into headers and solder-less bread boards. As others on your proto shield feedback have indicated.. using these headers like this results in bent pins and substandard connections.
The thing that troubles me is that this is not a new-design flaw. It HAD the correct header pins included in the past.. and you recently decided to remove them (which leaves one wondering if it was not done for cost reasons.. not that these headers cost more than a few cents).
I hope you all will fix this design flaw...
Thanks!
Tweeks

I received my ProtoShield yesterday and built it today. This is my first big soldering project and I decided to just dive right in. It went rather well. I attached it to my Arduino UNO and wired it up and uploaded a sketch to get both LEDs blinking and everything works. My soldering for a first timer is a wee bit sloppy but it was fun and a great kit to start soldering with. This has been a good confidence builder. Great kit.

I just bought the FEZ Panda and this ProtoShield. Love both and have had zero problems and had no missing pieces. Thanks, SparkFun. As a software engineer, I'm just getting into electronics and now wondering why I ever majored in computer science when EE is so much more interesting!

This shield is nice. I got mine wired up last night. I made some changes. Instead of the yellow leds that came with it I put in high brightness SMD leds. I also added a mini breadboard and put pins in the led and switch connections for easy breadboarding.
The change I made that I think will help many people is the spacers I made so you cannot push the board down too far. I was trying to figure out how to do that without having to fab them or get too exotic. Then I realized the cheapo sockets you can get from Radio Shaft or Sparkfun are perfect for this.
What you do is push the pins out from the bottom. Cut pieces that contain two sockets (have to sacrifice a 3rd to cut it). Then removed any raised bumps or edges to square it out. Make four of these. Then you slip these over each of the corner two pins of the proto shield. You may need to tack the bottom of these to the proto board with a bit of super glue. Now when you go to put these in the Arduino board you cannot push it down further than these spacers allow. Enjoy! :)

I received the protoshield, but noticed that the USB connector gets in the way of inserting the board. I am trying to use it with an Arduino Uno. Was this shield designed for another type of Arduino? Both the power socket and USB connector prevent the protoshield from going all the way into the sockets. Any suggestions?

WTH sparkfun so much for a kit you shorted me a 10k and a 330 resistor not a big deal(I have extras) but still is it that hard to count resistors

I just got this kit today and found a couple of things right away that could make it better.
First is a hinderance to using with the mini breadboard installed. The two rows of holes for GND and 5V get covered up so I can't add female headers to use with the breadboard. I end up needing to use two rows of the breadboard and jumpers to get more than one 5v or 3 GND pins...
It would be nice to have some holes for 5 pin female headers at the end of the breadboard next to 6pin ICSP header for 5V and GND. (Like the ugly green adafruit board has. I love the red color of the SparkFun Boards. :) )
Second, I agree with @johngineer that the 3 single pin holes for the two LEDs and Switch 2 should be grouped next to each other so we can use a single 3 pin female header instead of 3 single pin headers. To get 3 single female headers, I had to sacrifice 3 other pins!

I preferred the older version, with the male headers and the female ones on the inner part of the board.
One, the stackable female headers are a bit flimsy IMO compared to the male ones, and they bend easily when removing the shield.
Also, before, the female headers were right next to the breadboard, which was handy.
True, the old version was not stackable, but it also made more sense when used with the breadboard.
Solution: allow customers to buy the PCB only, that way, the can do whatever they want.

This board is convenient for prototyping but it has errors!
The analog inputs are numbered backwards from the arduino (NG & diecimila at least)!! You can go mad wondering why your sensors seem to be floating (they are - look under the shield at the real thing to get your terminal #'s right)
Also, the S2 button is not pulled down properly. It's on the PCB as Junction - resistor - switch - ground. Oops, unusable!
So the shield - good idea and all that, but whoever QA'd it needs to be let go!

There are 3 single male pins, one each for the two LEDs, and one for the button. Wouldn't it be better to make these female pins? That way you can just stick a wire in there like you do with the breadboard, rather than having to attach a wire with an alligator clip.

Bob Gallup's very helpful (though slightly out-of-date w/the latest shield) "assembly instructions" demonstrate soldering single pins for jumpers 1-3; however, i noted on the close-up images of the ProtoShield on SparkFun there are no such pins shown.

great kit for the arduino noob. mine came in a sharp red color too. just a note, I blindly followed the tutorial from the link and broke up the header pins before I realized the new board has two 6 pin instead of one 4 and one 6. Still there's enough extra pins and I have bag of these things anyway.
one weird thing though. The leads from the switch S2 contact the USB receptable on the arduino board. the tutorial points this out and recommends electrical tape to prevent a short. Seems like something that could be avoided in the design. if you take the shield off and on or it is anywhere it might be compressed you can be sure the sharp pins from S2 will go through electrical tape and short. I am looking for some kind of potting material or epoxy to ensure no short.

Just completed assembly. Easy to put together and a good layout. My only suggestion would be to put the switch and two LED terminals next to each other, where the user could put an optional 3-pin female connector. This would make it easier to connect to these from the breadboard.