Protostack has released a new and improved version of it’s 28-pin development board. It’s priced at $9.60 and includes a number of welcome changes from the one I reviewed here in a previous post.

Read on to see what’s changed….

Ok, so what’s changed? Well, have a look at the image of the board below.

Bare View of Board (No Components Soldered.) Click image to view a full sized version of this image.

One welcome revision is the clearer labelling of the positive and negative power rails. They are now labeled with the more intuitive + and – symbols for positive and negative, respectively.

Also, the 6-pin ISP connector has changed from a single 6 row arrangement to a 3×2 arrangement (as shown in Image 2, below.)

ISP 6 pin Header Revisions

Image2: ISP 6 pin Header Revisions. Click on the image to view a full-sized version

There’s also space on this revision of the board for an integrated, voltage-regulated power supply circuit. So if you need a built-in 5v or 3.3v power supply you won’t have to mess about building one of your own and finding somewhere to attach it to the power rails!  The only criticism I can think of with this feature is that there’s no space for a diode. This would offer more protection against damaging the Microcontroller (and other sensitive components) if you accidentally mixed up your positive and negative by, for example, connecting up a battery the wrong way round.

As far as connecting a power supply to the board is concerned, you have two options: either a normal 2-pin connector, or a barrel connector (which allows you to use any run-of-the-mill  power adaptor as a power source) can be used  in order to supply power to the board. You can see where both types of connector can be fitted to the board in images 3 and 4, below.

Power Supply Circuit (No Barrel Connector)

Image 3: Power Supply Circuit (Without Barrel Connector) Click on image for a full-sized version.

Soldered Power Supply circuit (With Barrel Connector)

Image 4: Power Supply circuit (With Barrel Connector) Click on image for a full-sized version

Overall, this revision of the board looks a lot more beginner friendly that the one I previously reviewed here in July. The clearly marked power rails (with the familiar + and - symbols) and the integrated power supply make it one of the best prototyping boards out there for a beginner hobbyist in my opinion.

If you need more info on this development board then a datasheet and users’ guide are available from Protostack, in PDF format.

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