Tindie

2024! Finally, after a few years delay, I'm excited to start assembling the Tall Dog's excellent Breakout Board for the 3.5/36. I have a 3.5

As a retired electronics engineer (and in "late-years") it's a fiddly job, especially for unsteady fingers and tired-eyes. However, slowly and in no rush to get to the end (and certainly not mine at least) it is manageable. The good Quality of Build is wonderful to work with.

The intention here is to socket the 3.5, so a socket-set was also purchased. A second set was also bought to provide spares for those parts that get sprinkled over the floor, never to found again, except by the vacuum-cleaner.

Hint 1. The four short pogo-pins in the board-kit, will be replaced by the longer versions supplied in the socket set. The 3.5 will be further raised by the female-header being mounted on the board. These longer pogo-pins adequately overcome the summed body-heights (black plastic mouldings) of the female and male headers, when the latter are fully mated together.

Hint 2. The pogo-pins are to be mounted perfectly flat and square upon the oval-pads on the board's upper surface (directly facing the 3.5). The main body of the pogo-pin is 1/16" (one-sixteenth of an inch) or 1.65 mm in diameter. They are two pairs of plated-through-holes, each pair uses the familiar 0.1"/2.54 mm grid. To assist soldering, a very small strip of proto-typing board (coper-removed!) with two holes drilled out to 1/16" can be used to hold the shoulders of the two pogo-pins against the PCB for soldering. Hold the strip down with a small clamp, rather than with the fingers, which would then commit a hand to the task.

Hint 3. The screw-hole sizes UNC #2 will accept an M2 screw-size and the UNC #6 an M3.5 screw-size. UNC threads are different in form and pitch and have no true metric replacement.

My thanks to Tindle and Tall Dog and "happy hobbying" folks!

Joel | June 4, 2021

Excellent board. A bit hard to do final assembly.

For Teensy 3.5/3.6 Breakout (Revision A, Uno)

This is a great project and an awesome addition to a Teensy board. The only flaw is that it's very difficult to do the final assembly when you press Teensy onto the pins. Still worth it though.

Perry | March 9, 2020

It Works. Great Customer Service

It's a quality board, and the seller helped resolve a shipping issue. I only wish I had known previously that I needed to solder a jumper wire from VUSB to VIN to power an Arduino shield at 5V.

Thomas | Oct. 16, 2019

A very good breakout board, but difficult to assemble

I would not recommend this breakout board for a beginner. I have a Weller Temperature Controlled Soldering Station and 50 years of soldering experience and found it moderately difficult to assemble. However, once assembled it has worked flawlessly providing easy access to all of the Teensey 3.2 input and output pins.

Paul | July 7, 2019

Teensy Breakout with Smart Ramps?

My Teensy Breakout arrived quickly and the directions, pin card, and comments here are very helpful. Comments in the documentation concerning any differences between these pin properties and the DUE would be helpful as well.

I want to try using the Teensy 3.6 + your breakout with a 3.3v tolerant 3D printer controller board like the Smart Ramps here on Tindie.com or the Ramps-FD + Marlin 2.0. Marlin uses pin_MCU.h files to match the pins from the MCU to the controller. There are several pin files that are close to your breakout mapping: pins_RAMPS4DUE.h (for MEGA or DUE), pins_RAMPS_SMART.h. I want to make a “plug-n-play” pins.h for the Teensy with your breakout.

Any suggestions or comments?
Have you come across anyone who has done this already?

Clint | June 24, 2019

Great product

Well thought out, fairly easy to assemble. Good value for the price. Documentation could use photos, but after the first one, assembly is straightforward. The included pinout card is a nice touch. Will buy again.

Francisco J Moliner | June 3, 2019

Thanks

I made mistake and apply for different product explained to seller.
Excellent post selling communication, very helpfully and good quality product. Highly recommend!!!
Francisco

Remi | June 1, 2019

Nice breakout - big USB connector

Nice breakout, wich makes Teensy 3.5 3.6 compatible with Arduino shield.

The USB connector is quite big and I had to cut a shield before I can put it on the breakout.

May be this breakout will be available some day with a mini/micro USB connector ?

Donald | May 11, 2019

Access to all the Teensy's pins

The Teensy boards are powerful solutions to many problems, but as they've become more powerful, it has become harder to use the microprocessor to its full potential. The breakout board (and socket set) allow you to use every pin. The full-access board is 40 pins long with 0.9" row spacing, compared with the Teensy 3.6: 24 pins long with 0.6" row spacing -- definitely not compact, but that's the trade-off.
I had a little difficulty with the pogo pins, but with good light, magnification and the right tools, the assembly was quick and correct. The instructions are good but a picture or two (from a Teensy forum) assured me that I was doing it right.
A few basic test told me it was assembled properly, but the best test will be a program using all the pins.

Donald | May 11, 2019

Good addition to the Breakout kit

For Teensy 3.5/3.6 Socket Kit

The socket kit isn't required for the breakout kit, but I didn't like the idea of soldering the Teensy to the breakout board with no easy way of separating them later. This kit adds one extra layer of connection between the breakout board and the Teensy. You'll have a few parts left over when you use both, so don't worry that you've forgotten something.

Thad | April 25, 2019

unlocks the full pins array of the teensy

I honestly think this should be how the teensy is sold. Without this breakout, the pads from the underside of the teensy become available. There was a great deal of thought built into this design. The assembly instructions are very easy to follow. The durability of the breakout is impressive as well. I've soldered, de-soldered, re-soldered and have not had issues with pads lifting.

In Tall Dogs next revision, I'd love to see one pin strip on each side rail re-attached to GND on a cut-able trace. Also, to have SM pads to easy add external pull-up resisters to the i2C pins, and a pad to add an indicator LED to the HOST-PWR switch.

Brian | April 19, 2019

Awesome kit!

For TinyFPGA BX Breakout (Revision A)

The kit works great, and really makes it easy to connect up all the pins to a breadboard (while looking pretty good!).

You might want to pre-break the two sides of the PCB if you want to take them off... doing it afterwards is hard and probably dangerous.

Davin | Feb. 17, 2019

Amazing Product! Such a great help.

This is the best way to jump over to a teensy based project from working with Arduino. Having access to every single pin on the teensy in a shield-compatible format is great for rapid building and testing of new hardware. The build is extremely simple (as long as you follow in the instructions in order) and takes almost no time at all.

The only issue I've had is the USB sits a little higher than the standard Arduino build out. This caused my shield to ground out and behave erratically. Nothing a little tape couldn't fix.

Dennis | Feb. 10, 2019

Opens So Many Possibility For Arduino Development

Finally an Arduino Due form factor compatible breakout for the Teensy 3.6! This is Arduino on steroids:
- 180MHz Processor
- 1Mb of Program Memory
- 256Kb Static RAM
- Floating Point Processor
AND, it fully integrates with the Arduino IDE!

If you have this breakout and a 3.6 and it can't give you all you computing power you need.........

Pat | Feb. 1, 2019

Teensy 3.5 breakout.

An old hand at electronics, yet new to the world of microcontrollers. Built an analog Synthesizer in the late '70s - not from a kit. Loads of fun but shelved it a couple of years later. A couple of years ago, allowed myself to be bitten by the old Synth bug again and collected a clutch of Roland synths and other goodies which led to my first Arduino project, using a Mega clone in a pedal controller. I trashed four ancient ('70s - '80s) for the optical pedals and yeah well.. it works!

Then I came across this:- https://cs.gmu.edu/~sean/projects/gizmo/ and of course put one together, then another etc until now I have this 5-Pack of Gizmos. Next is to pop a T_3.5 in the box with 'em to give the 5-pack a class compliant USB interface, and control surface consisting of forty something buttons, 19 pots, and an encoder etc.

So far I've got one working using a T_3.2 plugged into a Sparkfun adapter with a 3.3volt hacked Sparkfun Midi shield.

Tall Dog's T_3.5 breakout enables me to have access to all pins in a stripboard-friendly way as that's what I'm using.
All pots will be wired direct to analog pins and some muxes are gonna join the party for the buttons.

All the holes have been installed in the box, boards loaded with pots, buttons and it all fits! What remains is laying out and wiring up T_3.5 and associated bits and pieces, more holes and so on. Then to wear out my code training wheels a little more. Hmm the greater part of the task is no doubt the mechanical details.

As for the the Tall Dog breakout. First time I ever ordered stuff from the U.S. Am surprised how quick it arrived. Excellent quality pcb. I read thru the docs and got the gist but am a bit fussy about how things get put together so spent a little time figuring out how to set up an alignment jig and a sequence of where to start and what goes next etc. No stress is best for reliability.

So, thank you Daniel for an excellent product. Keep up the good work.
Cheers
Pat

Aubrey | Nov. 11, 2018

Excellent product for the money

My partners and I are working on a project that requires access to most, if not all the pins on the Teensy 3.2 and this fills the bill nicely. It is a little difficult to get the 14 pin SMD header soldered in place exact enough to fit the holes in the breakout board but it isn't impossible. Took a while also to get the "POGO" pins figured out and that I should solder the tantalum capacitor for USB Host Mode on the breakout board, not the underside of the Teensy. The Documentation needs to have things like this highlighted so a quick glance for experienced constructors will find it first, not later.

I really like the 2 switches for controlling VIN and VUSB on one side and USB-USB Host on the other side. Also leaving the side header strips on allows one to customize multiple connections to pins that need it. It's easy enough to cut the little between hole jumpers to isolate pins or sets of pins and using 30 gauge wire-wrap wire to make necessary connection to the Teensy's pins on the underside of the breakout board.

It would be really nice if the 4 corner holes were sized for 4-40 instead of 2-56 screws though. Not a lot of people have 2-56 standoffs or other hardware on hand but do have 4-40 in large quantities, myself included.

The board system does have a few "warts" but not sufficient to drop it down from a 5 star rating as once you get it constructed is is really easy to work with.

The actual makeup of the breakout PC Board itself is EXCELLENT! Super quality and with the gold plated solder points, soldering is easy and very easy to clean the flux off if desired.

The only suggestion I have is for you (especially someone new to this type of system) to read the construction manual through several times before starting to put it together. Even experienced builders need to do this (don't ask me how I figured this out - LOL) to make sure you get the steps right. It's very difficult, if not impossible to un-solder the Teensy to get at it's underside if you leave a step out. With the need for the POGO pins, it's impossible to use a socket for the Teensy and it would be really nice if a way were to be found to allow for socketing the Teensy and still have access to all of those pins.

Jeffrey | Sept. 19, 2018

Beautifully designed and manufactured!

Beautifully designed and manufactured, well thought out organisation and packaging of the various parts. Iv'e been too busy with trying to finish a couple of older projects, so have yet to tackle assembly, so I haven't sought out the instructions. I got versions for the 3.2 as well as the 3.5/6 teensy models. Shipment was reasonably quick and I was glad to see them show up on my front step! The PJRC Teensy products are well supported, and thoughtfully designed . They are a nice gateway into the Arm Cortex universe for your average users, so they are a great choice for this seller to make things for. Teensy ARM boards have lots of extra connections, so TallDog, has made access to them much neater and easier!

Steven | Sept. 1, 2018

Nice kit

I enjoyed assembling this board. The only issue I had was that as a complete Teensy newb, it wasn't clear what I had to cut for the VIN/VUSB switch. I did figure it out, but a diagram would have been a plus.

Also, I started with a Teensy with the side pins already installed, which made installing the center 14-pin header a pain. In retrospect it would have been easier to desolder the side pins. This isn't a knock against the kit, since the Teensy normally comes with no pins.

In all, I found this easy-to-assemble and well-made.

Peter | May 24, 2018

A Quality Product Requiring Careful Assembly

The board is manufactured to the highest standard, that's a plus.
What I ordered was exactly what I got in the bag, that's another plus.
The documentation is not great, that's a minus. According to the old saying a picture is worth a thousand words, and although I don't expect a small-volume product to be supported with professional artwork a few simple photos would have helped me a lot. Show me, don't tell me.
Assembling the board is a significant fine soldering challenge. That's not a plus or a minus, it's a caution to novices. Careful checking and double-checking is required before the solder flows because mistakes are very difficult to remedy. If I were to tackle another one it would be a piece of cake, of course, and I would be full of confidence.

My Tips

You know that glossy double-sided card that came with your Teensy? Hope you didn't throw it out because it helped me a lot in following Tall Dog's instructions.
There are a couple of Teensy PCB tracks to cut, and the instructions suggest doing that with a razor blade. Yikes! Please don't do that, use the point of a craft knife or, as I did, the tip of a 1mm jewellers screwdriver.
And take it slow and careful, use an illuminated magnifier to check, double-check, and triple-check every joint before moving on the next stage.

Austin | April 7, 2018

Good product... I just messed up

I personally couldn't get the surface mount stuff to line up. I ended up breaking the suface mount pads on the bottom of the teensy...

The seller gave me a discount on another board! Thank you Tall-Dog!

Jeremy | March 4, 2018

Great product and build quality

I found these boards during a web search and put myself on the wait list immediately. As soon as they were available I ordered two for a Teensy 3.2 project I am working on - one for prototyping and one for potential permanent install. The boards arrived fairly quickly and are of great quality and design.

I'm not a novice builder, but I know that is it always a good idea to read instructions a couple of times, especially for somewhat specialized stuff like this. This was even more important for me in this case because I did not plan on using the board 100% exactly as intended. I wanted to use longer pins to allow insertion into a Teensy audio board.

Like other users I had some confusion about the VIN VUSB cut that you need to make on the Teensy, but a quick email to Daniel got me on the right track. My only real challenge with this build was the 14-pin double row header. While the instructions say to not worry about lining it up too much, this really does need to line up perfectly with the 5-pin header above it or the Teensy and Breakout wont sandwich together. Luckily, with some foresight I avoided a major issue by using a female header to hold everything in place. In the end I actually had more trouble from the A11,A10,AREF,VUSB header, but with a little gentle bending got everything together.

The 14-pin header soldering area is tight once the 5 pin header is installed. I would recommend knocking your soldering iron down a notch in this area. Melting the plastic can lead to pins sliding all over the place. Good light and a magnifying glass are *extremely* helpful here. This was my first time working with the 14-pin right angle header design that connects to pads and to conventional pins. Even for an experienced builder may grow impatient with this. Take breaks!

Altogether the build took me 2 hrs. That was after reading the instructions 3 times in separate sittings. When you consider the cost of this board, the Teensy and your time, you don't want to mess up. After I was done, all pins tested fine and I now have a great board that is perhaps too good to use for some projects! This breakout offers more functionality at your fingertips than most people would use in small projects.

It's possible there are complete photos of the build somewhere, but I was working from the text-only PDF which was OK for an experienced builder. Since my implementation is a bit different, I plan to post some picts of my build soon at: https://www.jeremydeprisco.com/electronics-projects/

Rob | Jan. 21, 2018

Bought 2x, shipped to UK, great

As per title, bought 2x, will probably buy more in the future, well made, well packaged. Communication listed as ok, simply because we didn't have any, plus none was required.
Thanks very much.

Gary | July 7, 2017

Teensy 3.2 Breakout board solves several problems...

I am working on a design using the Teensy 3.2 board and needed a reliable method of connecting to all the pins on the board - not just the exposed on the side! I my searches I ran across the Breakout Board for the Teensy 3.2 board. This board fit my needs perfectly - it has allowed me to put the Teensy board on a breadboard with ALL the connections available for use! The board is very well made with attention to detail! I will definitely keep this board in mind for all of my projects needing a Teensy 3.2 as I can not think of an easier way to gain access the the terminals on the bottom of the Teensy 3.2 board without resorting to fly-wiring (which I despise with a passion!). Check out the images that are posted on the website. If you don't feel you are good at soldering then go with the pre-built unit but for those of us who have over half a century solder this board is a breeze!

Jeff | June 28, 2017

This things a beast! (In a good way)

I would love to see a version of this with all the pins broken out into screw terminals. As it is, I'm going to end up cutting some of those proto boards from adafruit to give myself enough room to mount some. I know they make boards that are just rows of tied together pin holes (the name is escaping me), but they all seem to come in tiny or huge..

Awesome stuff though. Would have liked to seen on the pinout sheet what the pins in the center of the board did (I figured it out, but it wasn't as obvious as I'd hoped)

Thanks!
JJ

Kurt | May 29, 2017

Nice board to use with breadboard

I have designed and built several different boards for the Teensy processors, including a few different ones for the Teensy 3.6/5

But I wanted a quick and dirty one to use to do some more breadboard testing, so I thought I would give one of these a try.

The instructions for assembly were clear and it works well. While I will continue to do my own boards, I will next assemble the 2nd one I purchased with a T3.5, so that I have a breadboard version to try out code changes on that chip as well.

Again nice board.

David | May 11, 2017

Thanks For Making This!

I needed to make one of these expansion boards, but I found yours, and I'm very happy with it.

I bought a few different packages, but I am currently using the presoldered dip64 populated with a T36, and I couldn't be happier with it.

Thanks again for making my life easier, any time I need a new teensy I am going to order it through you with an expansion board.

I hope you order the teensys from PJRC!!! I want Paul to get as much money as possible for these excellent microcontrollers.

Response from Tall Dog | May 11, 2017

Thanks very much for the kind words! I'm so glad you like using the board.

I order the virtually all the Teensy boards for assemblies from PJRC directly.

Joseph | Aug. 31, 2016

A model product.

TLDR version: If you have found this product via a search for "Teensy breakout" or "how to mount Teensy 3.x" then you have found the exact product you are looking for, look no further.

Not to overuse the classic "I never write reviews but..." line, but I really don't. Okay, I almost never write product reviews unless I feel compelled to convince others not to buy some sort of ersatz garbage, but today that is not the case.

I spend my days working as an engineer, and my evenings as a mad scientist (okay, just a different sort of engineer) working on a prototype robotics development platform, and I love the Teensy boards, they are truly what Arduino should be, and after using my first board I cannot see myself going back. That said, I am a perfectionist, and although I am working on a prototype, I also view it as a sort of physical manifestation of my resume, and as a result I care a lot about form/fit/function simultaneously, and as-is the Teensy boards do not share in my mentality as they do not have any sort of proper means to mount them. I could go on for pages about how that was a massive glaring design oversight, but I won't, the boards are what they are (which is just good enough to make it into my prototype in a few spots supporting the main controller) and that is where this breakout board comes in.

I have purchased two of these boards so far, and in two separate orders, if nothing else that should say something about the product.

These boards are an example of good engineering and great product development, I know, I know, those are strong words for such a simple product but really it's the simplicity that makes these boards great. They are made of [apparently] high quality materials, all the pins line up, and it does exactly what it was supposed to do, with no frills, added features, or anything else to get in the way of things.

The closest competing product that I could find (which is priced almost the same) is a breakout shield which gives the Teensy the same form factor as a standard Arduino Uno. Sure, the competing product performs an almost identical function, but it was clearly designed with added features in mind, and to make it so that less-motivated folks can stick to their pre-packaged Arduino add-ons instead of [gasp] breaking out the soldering iron one more time. Disclaimer: I actually own one of these boards, but I have yet to assemble it, I prefer the smaller package of this breakout.

This product was also my first Tindie purchase, and was the reason I found Tindie in the first place (Tindie is pretty sweet).

I would have given all 5 stars, but I didn't want my review to seem manufactured so I gave only 4 stars for shipping because (don't hate me) Amazon is faster. That said, Daniel shipped me my second order while out of town thousands of miles away, and that is dedication.

Response from Tall Dog | Sept. 1, 2016

Wow Joseph, I don't know what to say! Thanks for the glowing review! I'm also a perfectionist, and I tend to use the prototyping phase to resolve form & fit issues too. I guess I want my prototypes to accurately represent the quality of my finished work. This can slow things down sometimes, but it can also make the process much more rewarding and fun. Doing this also tends to surface usability issues that wouldn't otherwise become apparent with a jumble-of-wires prototype unit. I think both approaches have their place, even within the scope of the same project! Finally, I'd just like to add that I think the Teensy is incredibly well engineered, it just happens to prioritize its (small) size over other concerns (hence the name Teensy). I see this breakout as providing a subtle re-balancing between size and convenience.

Alistair | Aug. 6, 2016

Excellent product that extends Teensy 3.2 functionality

Recent work with Linear Technologies' ADC and DAC hardware got me wondering about using the other SPI config on the Teensy 3.2 and for some reason, I found the 3.2 Breakout board online. It immediately struck me as a useful addition perhaps for future projects, so I decided to buy a few and check out the setup and potential usefulness of access to all pins.

Shipping was relatively quick (Australia) and the packaging and documentation excellent.
I was immediately struck by how thoughtful everything seemed to be packaged and presented.
The board is very good quality, well marked and the components even though small fitted with no problems.

Although it initially takes some time to construct, due to a lack of familiarity, it is a straightforward process that I still would not rush.
I could even see some scope for variation of header components but building it for breadboard use is a logical starting point.
The construction documentation was good and easy to follow. Some aspects of it I wondered about but that could be just me.

The Breakout board will though come into its own when used in special projects where getting the most out of the Teensy 3.2 is important, if not critical.

It is relatively pricey compared to the Teensy 3.2 itself but clearly, production volume would be a factor in this.
Overall, an important contribution to the Teensy world and I'm glad I found out about it.

Response from Tall Dog | Sept. 1, 2016

Thanks for the thoughtful review Alistair! My goal is to keep things simple, clear, and concise. That said, the documentation, especially the assembly instructions, are always going to be a work-in-progress. As I assemble more and more boards, my own process tends to evolve, and these changes are reflected whenever I revise the docs. Look for some major revisions coming soon! Also, I tend to keep stock low to remain flexibility, and this does increase the cost a little bit, but not by very much. Most of the extra components, especially the optional ones, are basically sold at cost. Finally, I love to hear about alternate header setups. Some folks have requested pins facing up instead of down, and I'm always happy to accommodate these kinds of variations. I've also assembled "socketed" variations using female headers (as have others) and I'm considering offering the necessary components as another kit option. There will also be a "carrier" version of the board soon as well!

John | Dec. 23, 2015

great product, good communication

The Teensy breakout board makes it much easier to prototype with the Teensy. I have just experimented enough to verify everything works, but I plan to hook it up to a Mercury FPGA board (for high-speed quadrature decode and other sensor aggregation) and a motor controller, and being able to prototype things on a breadboard will make getting it working much easier.

Response from Tall Dog | Sept. 1, 2016

Yup, this is exactly why I made these boards in the first place. Good luck with your projects John!

John | June 19, 2015

Fantastic Arduino!

I think the Teensy 3.1 is a great Arduino for a great price. It's fast, has lots of memory, better analog capabilities, and good documentation.

My only complaint is the actual form factor of the pinouts themselves. I want all the pins broken out along the two long edges, not folded inside the PCB or accessible via a soldering pad on the bottom. I shouldn't need to purchase a separate "breakout" board just to get easy access to all the pins. Perhaps Teensy 3.2?

Response from Tall Dog | June 20, 2015

I understand your frustration! Why not send your thoughts over to PJRC too? Let them know how you feel. Since I'm not the designer of the Teensy boards themselves, these things are beyond my control. Anyway, this is why I made the breakout boards/kits in the first place.

Akop | June 16, 2015

Hard to imagine the Teensy without it

This is a great little breakout board - my only gripe is that the documentation asks that I only tack a few of the right-angle pins. The first time I tried that, half of the bottom pins failed to connect. Second time I soldered every single pin, and that worked great.

Other than that, the quality is excellent and the documentation is great - includes a handy card with all the pinouts.

Response from Tall Dog | June 17, 2015

Thanks for the great review! In regards to the instructions: Step 3 has you tack the header in place to check for proper alignment, but the following section (Step 4) does in fact instruct you to solder all of the pins onto the board. You're absolutely right though, this step is very important so every pin makes solid contact.

Nicholas | Nov. 10, 2014

Excellent Product, Quality Assembly (for Non-Kit Version)