Breakout Kit

A breakout kit usually consists of a ribbon cable and a breakout board. Its just a very convenient way of connecting all of the Raspberry Pi’s GPIO pins to a breadboard. If you don’t have a breakout kit at hand, you can also connect the Pi’s GPIO pins directly to a breadboard.

Ribbon cable

A ribbon cable usually has a colored stripe on one side (typically it’s red or white while the rest of the cable is gray or black). When you connect the cable to the Raspberry’s GPIO pins this colored side goes to the edge of the board. The other end of the ribbon cable is plugged into the breakout board, which is in turn connected to a breadboard.

Breakout board

Breakout boards are available in two different form factors: T-shaped and I-shaped. Both function exactly the same. It is very important to put the two rows of pins of the breakout board on either side of the central divide on the breadboard. If you don’t get that right you’ll easily brick your Raspberry as soon as you connect it to power.