Introducing the “ItsyBitsy” M4-Breadstick
Michael Rangen's development board makes prototyping easy by stretching out IO along a breadboard.
Dev boards like the Arduino Uno are great for very simple tasks like blinking an LED, but when it’s time to transfer your IO to a breadboard, things quickly become a jumble of wires. More advanced boards like the Arduino Nano and the Adafruit ItsyBitsy M4 Express can be plugged directly into breadboards via header pins, however, it may still be inconvenient to bunch all your wires up into pins beside each other. In the case of the ItsyBitsy, there’s also the potential issue of the 90º pin arrangement on the back.
When space isn’t at a premium — e.g. while prototyping or learning — Michael Rangen's M4-Breadstick offers an innovative alternative to crowded circuitry. This long and thin dev board spaces IO out along the central division of a standard breadboard, providing easy access to ground and power rails, with space in between for components and support boards.
The advantages of this arrangement are illustrated especially well in the first video below, where a motor driver board is spaced in such a way that the forward and reverse pins line up with two breadstick IO. The pins in between can then be easily connected, without the normal space restrictions.
The M4-Breadstick is, in fact, based on the Adafruit ItsyBitsy M4 Express, but laid out in a stretched out form factor. It also adds a row of DotStar-compatible LEDs, which can be used to indicate IO status, as shown in the video directly below, or shine together as a brilliant light display seen in the clip after that.
More details, including build files, are available on Rangen's GitHub if you’d like to create one yourself!