Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
board. Then, connect the cable to the Raspberry Pi GPIO pins and to the Cobbler PCB
breakout board, and you can start connecting devices directly through your bread-
board.
The instructions in this hack are also inspired by Limor “Ladyada” Fried's
excellent
Adafruit sells the Pi Cobbler in a couple variants:
Comes preassembled, so you can use it as soon as it arrives in the mail. (They
used to sell this as an unassembled kit, but it doesn't look like they do anymore.)
Slightly larger, but covers less of the pins on the breadboard due to its “T” layout.
At the time of this writing, the T-Cobbler is sold only as part of a kit (not preas-
sembled).
If you end up with an unassembled kit for either of these versions, do not fret. It is easy
to assemble it yourself. Here's everything you need:
• A soldering iron
• Some solder
• A breadboard
• Your Pi Cobbler kit, containing a blue PCB, a 26-pin ribbon cable, a black con-
nector, and some male header pins (this might be in a single stick or in two smaller
sticks)
If your male header pins (these are the metal pins with black plastic header in the
middle, splitting the pins into one short and one long end) are in a single long stick,
gently break off two pieces of 13 pins each. You can do this with your fingers or pliers.
These correspond to the two pairs of 13 holes on the long edges of the Pi Cobbler PCB.
Also, go ahead and plug in your soldering iron and set it on a stand (see
“Soldering
Reminders” on page
42
if you need some help or if it's been a while). Give it 5-10 minutes
to come up to full temperature. If you have a fancy soldering iron with a temperature
setting, Adafruit recommends you set it to 700 degrees Fahrenheit.
Place the Pi Cobbler PCB in front of you so that the pin labels (e.g., GND) are legible
and oriented normally. On the T-Cobbler kit, the board is aligned like a T. On the original
kit, the board's longer sides should be parallel to you.
The PCB is labeled with a box, indicating where the black header connector should be
placed. Gently press the header into the box, making sure to align the notch in the
