Little Bird
Breakout Garden for Raspberry Pi 400
Breakout Garden plugs into your shiny new Pi 400's GPIO pins and lets you connect up to three of our extensive selection of Pimoroni breakouts so they're con...
Breakout Garden plugs into your shiny new Pi 400's GPIO pins and lets you connect up to three of our extensive selection of Pimoroni breakouts so they're conveniently facing towards you and the right way up. We've got environmental sensors so you can keep track of the temperature and humidity in your office, a whole host of little screens for important notifications, readouts and GIFs, and, of course, LEDs (the Pi 400 is great, but needs more LEDs, amirite?). We've got a ton more too - check out the complete list of breakouts here!
The three sturdy black slots are edge connectors that connect the breakouts to the pins on your Raspberry Pi. There's one slot for SPI breakouts (like our 0.96" LCD Breakout or 1.12" SPI OLED Breakout), and two for I2C breakouts. Because I2C is a bus, you can use multiple I2C devices at the same time, providing they don't have the same I2C address (we've made sure that all of our breakouts have different addresses, and we print them on the back of the breakouts so they're easy to find).
As well as being a handy way to add functionality to your Pi 400, Breakout Garden is also very useful for prototyping projects without the need for complicated wiring, soldering, or breadboards, and you can grow or change up your setup at any time.
Please note that breakouts are sold separately!
Features
- Three sturdy edge-connector slots for Pimoroni breakouts
- 2x I2C slots (5 pins)
- 1x SPI slot (7 pins)
- 0.1” pitch, 5 or 7 pin connectors
- Broken-out pins
- Reverse polarity protection (built into breakouts)
- Exclusive right angle format for the Pi 400
Using Breakout Garden
Because of the way that I2C (the protocol that Breakout Garden uses) works, it doesn't matter which slot on the Breakout Garden that you plug your breakout into. Each I2C device has an address (you'll see it on the back of each breakout) that it uses to identify itself to other I2C devices, so it's effectively saying to your Raspberry Pi, "Hey, it's me, Bob!"
SPI is a faster, higher-throughput protocol for talking to devices like displays. The SPI slot on Breakout Garden Mini uses chip select 1 (BCM 7) and BCM 19 for the GPIO pin (used for things like LCD backlights).
We've built reverse polarity protection into our Pimoroni breakouts, meaning that there's no magic blue smoke if you accidentally plug one in the wrong way round. However, the correct way to plug them in is to make sure that the labels on the pins on your breakout and the labels on each Breakout Garden 400 slot match up.
We've also broken out a load of useful pins along the top of Breakout Garden Mini, so you can connect other devices and integrate them into your Breakout Garden projects. If you have Pimoroni breakouts to which you've already soldered headers, then you can use this top row of pins to use them alongside other breakouts on Breakout Garden Mini.
Software
As a first port of call, we'd recommend checking out the shop pages for whatever breakouts you're using - they will link you to the Python library and installation instructions.
Alternatively, head over to the Breakout Garden GitHub repo and give our automagic installer a go. Just pop a few breakouts into Breakout Garden 400, run the installer, and SHAZAM!, the software for the appropriate breakouts will be installed. We've also got a few nice examples to show you what's possible.
Jargon buster
Plain-language definitions for the technical terms used above.
- breakout
- A breakout is a small circuit board that makes a tiny or hard-to-solder component easier to connect to with standard pins. It matters because this OLED module can be wired into a microcontroller project without needing to solder directly to the display’s fine contacts.
- GPIO
- General-purpose input/output pins are microcontroller pins you can set in software to read signals, switch devices on and off, or connect to peripherals. The number of GPIO pins matters because it limits how many buttons, LEDs, sensors, and other parts you can wire directly to the board.
- Headers
- Rows of metal pins used to plug a module into a breadboard or connect it with jumper wires. Pre-soldered headers make the module easier to use straight away without needing to solder the pins yourself.
- I2C
- I2C is a two-wire communication bus used by many sensors and small modules. It matters because several I2C devices can share the same two wires, but each device needs a compatible address and your controller must support I2C.
- I2C address
- An I2C address is the number a device uses so a microcontroller can tell it apart from other devices on the same I2C bus. It matters because two devices with the same fixed address may conflict if used together.
- LCD
- LCD stands for liquid crystal display, a screen technology that uses a backlight and liquid crystals to show images or text. It matters because LCD modules usually need a display driver and enough controller pins or a bus interface to send image data.
- Matter
- A smart home connectivity standard designed to let devices work across different ecosystems. It matters if you want a project to integrate more easily with platforms such as Apple Home, Google Home, or other Matter-compatible systems.
- OLED
- OLED stands for organic light-emitting diode, a display type where each pixel produces its own light. It matters because OLED screens are thin, high-contrast and easy to read for small status displays, but they can be more sensitive to image burn-in than some other display types.
- reverse polarity protection
- A circuit feature that helps protect the board if power is connected the wrong way around. It matters because it can reduce the chance of damaging the breakout during wiring mistakes, especially in classroom or prototyping use.
- SPI
- A fast serial communication bus often used for displays, memory cards, and sensors. It matters because SPI devices need specific pins for clock and data, plus a separate chip-select line for each device.
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