What Is a Breakout Board?
A breakout board is a small interface board that "breaks out" the terminals of a hard-to-solder chip (usually SMD and fine-pinned) to easy-to-use, wide-spaced pins.
What Is It For?
Using a tiny SMD chip by hand on a breadboard is nearly impossible. A breakout board solves this by hosting the chip and bringing its legs out to standard 2.54 mm pin headers.
| Property | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Input | Fine/SMD chip legs |
| Output | 2.54 mm usable pins |
| Extra | Sometimes has a regulator/pull-up |
Relationship to Sensor Modules
Most sensor/module boards on the market are actually breakout boards: besides the chip they also host the needed regulator, pull-up resistors and connector; so they plug directly into the project.
Difference From a Development Board
A development board is aimed at running a programmable chip; a breakout board is mostly a passive/simple interface that makes a single chip accessible.
Where Is It Used?
Sensor modules, SMD chip prototyping, breadboard experiments and quickly testing hard-to-solder components.
Passive Adapter or Module?
The simplest breakout board is just an SMD-to-DIP adapter: it opens the chip's legs out to pins and adds nothing else. More advanced ones also host the regulator, I2C pull-up resistors and filter capacitors the chip needs to work correctly. Which is needed depends on the chip's requirements.
Common Mistakes
- Pull-up assumption: not checking whether the board has built-in pull-ups.
- Voltage: giving 5V to a 3.3V-chip breakout.
- Pin order: connecting without reading the labels.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a sensor module a breakout board?+
Why is it needed?+
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