Freetronics Protoshield for Arduino

Freetronics version v3.0 ProtoShields are the best Arduino prototyping shields ever designed. Not making any bold claims or anything, but they are totally awesome.

They come with all the supporting components already fitted as surface-mount parts so you can start using them right away, and we even ship them with two sets of headers: regular male break-away headers, and also stackable male/female headers! That way you can decide whether to use it as a super low-profile board using the regular headers or have the flexibility of stacking multiple shields on top of each other using the stackable headers.

A major design criteria was to provide maximum prototyping area rather than waste space with parts that you might only use on some projects, so the proto area extends all the way to the ends of the PCB.

Features

• Gold-plated surface: solders easily and very resistant to finger oil, etc.
• Large prototyping area: 241 through-plated holes.
• Clearly marked GND and 5V rails beside prototyping area.
• Blue surface-mount “power on” LED.
• 2 × 100nF power supply smoothing capacitors pre-fitted as surface-mount parts.
• Reset button wired through to the Arduino so you can reset it even with the shield mounted over the top.
• One general-purpose push button with its output biased LOW via a 10K resistor: output goes HIGH on button press.
• 2 general-purpose surface-mount LEDs (one green, one red) with current limiting resistors pre-fitted: drive HIGH to illuminate.
• Overlay printed on both the top and the bottom of the board so you don’t have to turn it over to see what you’re soldering onto.
• Yellow soldermask makes it easy to write notes / mark connections on the board with a felt-tip pen.
• Sexy rounded corners.

What’s not to like? We think they’re a work of art!