Silicon Chip – May 2019

94 Silicon chip Australia’s electronics magazine siliconchip.com.au

the 2x3-way female head-

er into the Arduino board

and then slot the breakout

board on top. Ensure it is

flush and pushed down

firmly before soldering

the headers into place. All

these header pins are sol-

dered from the top side of

the board.

Check the headers are

correctly soldered, and

unplug the breakout board

from the Arduino board.

Use a similar technique

for the headers that con-

nect to the display panel,

although you may find that

your display panel does not

come with the 4-pin male

header fitted.

Assuming this is the

case, plug the 4-way male

header into the 4-way fe-

male header, then plug

the 14-way female header

onto the display panel’s

pin header.

Put the 4-way male head-

er end into the display

panel and rest the break-

out board on top, ensuring

that all 18 header pins are

in their correct locations.

Now solder the headers onto the breakout board and then

flip the assembly over to solder the 4-way male header to

the display panel. The breakout board is now complete

and can be plugged back into the Arduino.

Optionally, you can use tapped spacers and machine

screws to secure the display panel to the breakout board.

Mount the spacers to the display panel with the spacers

behind and the screws on top. Fit the breakout board to the

rear of the display panel, and secure with the four remain-

ing screws. There will be a slight gap between the male

be broken off if you are using it for the 2.8in display, as
otherwise the board is 13mm wider than it needs to be.

Construction

The breakout board PCB is coded 24111181 and meas-
ures 98 x 55mm. Use Fig.5, the PCB overlay diagram, as a
guide during construction.
If you wish to cut down your board to suit a 2.8in dis-
plays, this should be done first, to avoid damage to installed
components. Run a sharp knife over the four tracks cross-
ing the narrow bridge to cut them cleanly. This avoids any
risk of them tearing and lifting off the board.
Now use broad-edged pliers to gently flex the board
along the line of the slot until it breaks. You may
like to clean up the rough edges with a file; we rec-
ommend doing this outside, preferably with a face
mask to avoid inhaling fibreglass dust.
The resistors are the first parts to fit, where shown
in Fig.6. The 1k resistors will have colour bands of
either brown-black-red-gold or brown-black-black-
brown-brown, while the 470 resistors will have
either yellow-violet-brown-gold or yellow-violet-
black-black-brown.
You can leave the header for JP1 off (you probably
won’t need it) but if you do want to install it, do so
now. You can mount the header but leave the shunt
off at first if you aren’t sure.
Next, fit the five headers which connect to the Ar-
duino board. The easiest and neatest way to do this
is to use the Arduino board itself as a jig.
Plug the 6-way, 8-way, 10-way male headers and

Fig.5: the breakout board circuit routes the connections between the Arduino pins and LCD

touchscreen headers, while providing level translation to allow the 5V Arduino to drive the

3.3V chips on the LCD board. This conversion is done using 1k/470resistive dividers.

Fig.6: use this PCB overlay diagram as a guide when building the

breakout board. After fitting the resistors where shown, you just

need to solder the headers in place. Some go on the top while

those which plug into the Arduino are mounted on the bottom.