ProtoMate for Raspberry Pi

ProtoMate for Raspberry Pi is a breadboard-style prototyping HAT for any 40-pin Raspberry Pi, designed to allow you to solder your custom breadboard circuit to a HAT-format board – ideal for projects that you want to make more permanent and reliable, moving from loose jumper wires and breadboards to a proper soldered HAT!

The ProtoMate has two breadboard-style soldering areas (20×8 and 14×6), i.e. the pads/holes are connected in lanes. Some customers prefer this style, and some prefer the disconnected, perfboard-style. If perfboard-style is more your thing, check out the PerfMate for Raspberry Pi instead.

The larger breadboard-style soldering area has a central rail section, split in the middle (feel free to bridge it together), and is surrounded by the Raspberry Pi GPIO. We’ve essentially split the usual 40-pin header in half, and added a 20×8 breadboard-style area in the middle! The smaller soldering area is great for adding ICs – for example, the MCP23017 fits perfectly.

ProtoMate also includes several rails on each side of the board, great for making banks of power pads for your project. These are connected in lanes, indicated by the gold pad bridges and white frames. You can cut the trace bridges between the rail pads if you want to disconnect them from each other. You’ll also notice separate I2C and Serial breakout pads, a handy extra we added.

Plan your circuit and pins (then check it at least twice!), fit your components to the board, then solder them along with any prototyping wire connections. We include a free GPIO header with the ProtoMate, and recommend soldering the header last to make it easier to get to the components from the underside.

Raspberry Pi and mounting hardware (standoffs) not included.

Key Features

Our product team spent time considering how to make the most out of a HAT-sized board:

🐫 Two breadboard-style soldering areas (20×8 + 14×6)

📌 All IO pins broken out

️🖥️ Useful I2C and serial pins broken out

🛤️ Rails each side of the board to make banks for regularly used pins (such as 5V/GND)

🪙 ENIG (Gold) PCB plating for oxidation resistance and durability

🔪 Cuttable traces between the breadboard-style lanes

↕️ A big ol’ REAR SIDE label to remind you which way up to solder the board

🔩 M2.5 mounting holes, matching those of the Raspberry Pi

💸 GPIO header included!

Board Layout

Resources

• Assembly Guide
• A4 Printable Planning Sheet
• STEP file (PCB)

Dimensions

The board follows the official HAT mechanical outline and mounting hole size, including slots for camera/display cables:

Package Contents

• 1x ProtoMate for Raspberry Pi PCB
• 1x GPIO Header

Raspberry Pi and mounting hardware (standoffs) not included.