Breakout Boards / Level Shifters & Expanders

You just found the perfect I2C sensor, and you want to wire up two or three or more of them to your Arduino when you realize "Uh oh, this chip has a fixed I2C address, and from what I know about I2C, you cannot have two devices with the same address on the same SDA/SCL pins!" Are you out of luck? You would be, if you didn't have this ultra-cool TCA9548A 1-to-8 I2C...

Because the Arduino (and Basic Stamp) are 5V devices, and most modern sensors, displays, flashcards, and modes are 3.3V-only, many makers find that they need to perform level shifting/conversion to protect the 3.3V device from 5V. Here we've got a 4-channel I2C-safe Bi-directional Logic Level Converter that has open-drain-with-10K-pullups outputs, great for logic...

We’ve gotten a lot of requests for a MCP23017 breakout and we’ve always sorta been like “ehh why not just use the DIP chip?” but with STEMMA QT we could see the use case for a plug and play version that comes with all the passives on board. This Adafruit MCP23017 I2C GPIO Expander Breakout has 16 GPIO with matching ground pad. We particularly...

If you'd like to connect a board with native CAN Peripheral support, the Adafruit CAN Pal Transceiver will take the 3V logic level signals and convert them to CAN logic levels with the differential signaling required to communicate. Note that not all chips have a CAN peripheral! Some that we know do have it are the ESP32/ESP32-S2/ESP32-S3 (note that ESP32 calls this...

Run two solenoids or a single DC motor with up to 800mA per channel using the super-simple L9110H H-bridge driver. This bridge chip is an 8 DIP package so it's easy to fit onto any breadboard or perfboard. Each chip contains one full H-bridges (two half H-bridges). That means you can drive 2 solenoids or a single DC motor bi-directionally. Just make sure they're good...

Because the Arduino (and Basic Stamp) are 5V devices, and most modern sensors, displays, flash cards and modes are 3.3V-only, many makers find that they need to perform level shifting/conversion to protect the 3.3V device from 5V. Although one can use resistors to make a divider, for high speed transfers, the resistors can add a lot of slew and cause havoc that is...

If you're looking to interface with telco, retro or industrial equipment you'll probably run into RS-232 interfaces. The Adafruit RS232 Pal - Two Channel UART to RS-232 Level Shifters is your friend in such cases, giving you two duplex channels of level shifting and taking care of the high/negative voltage generation all in a low cost breakout board. We use the...

Level shifting chips let you connect 3V and 5V devices together safely. This chip is similar to others in the shop (such as the 74LVC125) except this one is particularly good at converting 3V logic up to 5V. This is in demand, especially when connecting some 3V devices such as the Teensy 3 to NeoPixels! Just power the 74AHCT125 with 5V, it will detect 3V logic...

You just found the perfect I2C sensor, available in a handy chainable Qwiic, or STEMMA QT package, and you want to wire up two or three or more of them to your microcontroller when you realize "Uh oh, this chip has a fixed I2C address, and from what I know about I2C, you cannot have two devices with the same address on the same SDA/SCL pins!" Are you out of luck? You...

Because the Arduino (and Basic Stamp) are 5V devices, and most modern sensors, displays, flashcards, and modes are 3.3V-only, many makers find that they need to perform level shifting/conversion to protect the 3.3V device from 5V. Although one can use resistors to make a divider, for high-speed transfers, the resistors can add a lot of slew and cause havoc that is...

If you're hankerin' to use the new Qwiic / Stemma QT standard for your next project - but you're still using a classic Arduino UNO or other 5V microcontroller, this board is designed for you! Note that Adafruit Stemma QT (I2C) breakout boards are all 3V and 5V safe, but many other Qwiic and other I2C devices are not 5V safe or compatible. That means that if you use...

You just found the perfect I2C sensor, available in a handy chainable Qwiic, or STEMMA QT package, and you want to wire up two or three or four of them to your microcontroller when you realize "Uh oh, this chip has a fixed I2C address, and from what I know about I2C, you cannot have two devices with the same address on the same SDA/SCL pins!" Are you out of luck? You...

Expand your project possibilities, with the Adafruit AW9523 GPIO Expander and LED Driver Breakout - a cute and powerful I2C expander with a lot of tricks up its sleeve. GPIO expanders work like this: you have a board with some number of GPIO but not enough for your project - maybe you need more buttons or LEDs. You could upgrade to a board with massive number of GPIO...

If you want to interface with telco, retro, or industrial equipment, you'll probably run into RS-232 interfaces. The Adafruit RS232 Full-Pinout Breakout with 8 Channels of UART to RS-232 Level Shifters is your friend in such cases. It gives you 5 input and 3 output channels of level shifting and takes care of the high/negative voltage generation all in a low-cost...

You just found the perfect I2C sensor, and you want to wire up two or three or more of them to your Arduino when you realize "Uh oh, this chip has a fixed I2C address, and from what I know about I2C, you cannot have two devices with the same address on the same SDA/SCL pins!" Are you out of luck? You would be if you didn't have this ultra-cool PCA9546 1-to-4 I2C...

Now you can quickly integrate the Sensirion SEN54 / SEN55 environmental sensor node into your microcontroller or microcomputer project, with no soldering or fiddly breadboarding - thanks to this here Adafruit SEN54 or SEN55 Adapter Breakout. We covered the awesome Sensirion SEN54 / SEN55 environmental sensor nodes on EYE ON NPI a while ago, it's an awesome all-in-one...

If you're looking to use the Qwiic / Stemma QT standard for your next project - but you're using a sensor or device that requires 5V power or logic, this board is designed for you! It will let you use the 3V power and logic from your Raspberry Pi, or ARM Cortex microcontroller, and boost/shift it up to 5V for use with older or high-power devices that aren't happy...

NeoPixel LEDs (a.k.a WS2812 / SK6812 family) are a super-easy way to add addressable RGB lighting with only one GPIO. They're ubiquitous on microcontrollers, but some chips or single board computers (SBCs) don't have neopixel support due to the precision timing required to send data. We often get folks asking how to get NeoPixels working on some...

Expand your project possibilities, with the Adafruit PCF8575 GPIO Expander Breakout - an affordable 16 channel I2C expander. GPIO expanders work like this: you have a board with some number of GPIO but not enough for your project - maybe you need more buttons or LEDs. You could upgrade to a board with massive number of GPIO like the Grand Central, or you could pop on...

Sometimes you'll find yourself with an I2C bus controller on one side, and an I2C bus device on the other and you gotta keep em (electrically) separated. Maybe because one is Earth-grounded, maybe because you've got some funky power monitoring setup, maybe you want to reduce noise. Whatever it is, you can use the Adafruit ISO1540 Bidirectional I2C Isolator to add...

Adafruit has hundreds of designs that use I2C - a two-wire protocol that can let you quickly connect sensors, OLEDs, GPIO expanders, and more. Folks love I2C because you can simply connect 4 wires for power and data, and even better, share those wires with multiple devices! One things folks don't like about I2C is that each device requires it's own unique 'address'....

Most of our customers love using the Arduino for prototyping, design, and invention but find themselves stuck when trying to connect the Arduino to the latest sensors, displays, controllers, interfaces, etc. as they are almost all 3.3V logic these days. We try to solve this problem by having all our breakout boards be 5V compatible or when that's not possible,...

Expand your project possibilities, with the Adafruit PCF8574 GPIO Expander Breakout - an affordable 8 channel I2C expander. GPIO expanders work like this: you have a board with some number of GPIO but not enough for your project - maybe you need more buttons or LEDs. You could upgrade to a board with massive number of GPIO like the Grand Central, or you could pop on...

As we've been adding STEMMA QT connectors to our breakouts and dev boards, folks have been really enjoying the simplicity and speed of plugging in I2C sensors and devices for quick iteration and design. That's all good, but I2C wasn't really designed for hot-plugging. You're kinda supposed to have everything connected once on boot and never mess with it - I2C was...

The Raspberry Pi is an amazing single board computer - and one of the best parts is that GPIO connector! 40 pins of digital goodness you can twiddle to control LEDs, sensors, buttons, radios, displays - just about any device you can imagine. This Adafruit GPIO Expander Bonnet will give you even more digital deliciousness - 16 more digital input/output pins are yours...

It's a GPIO expander, it's a keypad matrix driver... its the Adafruit TCA8418 Keypad Matrix and GPIO Expander Breakout - a cute and powerful I2C GPIO expander and keypad matrix driver! This chip is quite fancy, with the ability to act as your I2C multi-tool for handling keypads, buttons or LEDs. This chip has 18 total 'I/O' pins, 10 columns and 8 rows. You can of...

Sometimes you feel low, and sometimes you feel high - cause your logic levels are opposite to what they should be! But this easy-to-use inverter chip will flip that frown upside-down. This chip is spec'd to run at 5V but we've run it at 3V just fine. Power it by connecting up GND and VCC to your desired output logic level. High-level inputs can be as low as 2V and...

Do you have too many sensors with the same I2C address? Put them on the SparkFun Qwiic Mux Breakout to get them all talking on the same bus! The Qwiic Mux Breakout with TCA9548A enables communication with multiple I2C devices that have the same address that makes it simple to interface with. The Qwiic Mux also has eight configurable addresses of its own, allowing for...

Since we first started carrying NeoPixels back in 2012, the chainable RGB LEDs have taken over the world. And a big part of that success is due to the simplicity of their wiring - just one data wire, no matter how many pixels you've got. So no surprise they're everywhere, blinking away in art exhibits, maker faire demos, DJ booths, decorations and costumes. But, at...