It seems like ages ago that I was complaining about not being able to access the UART pins when an add on board is attached to the GPIO header of my Raspberry Pi. I even drew a picture of what I was looking for. I still haven’t found anything exactly like that, but I have found something a bit clumsier, but which might work at a pinch.

Apparently they are known as IC Test Hooks. I bought a set of five in different colours from HobbyTronics. It’s hard to see in the picture, but they each have two tiny wire hooks which pop out of the end when you squeeze the handle, then spring back in again to grip the pin.

I have yet to use these “in anger”, and I have noticed already that the side wall of my ModMyPi case gets in the way a bit, but I’ll see how I get on.

In the background, plugged into my little breadboard, you can see another new gadget. This one surprised me when it arrived, as I had forgotten I had ordered it! It’s actually a neat little power-supply board which has pins just the right spacing to go into the standard power-lanes of a breadboard. It can be powered either by 6.5-12V DC in to a “barrel jack” power socket, or by the ubiquitous USB power into a full-size USB socket. Each of the two power lanes can be switched between 3.3V and 5V, and there’s a switch to stop the power to the whole kaboodle.

I have this feeling that I might be using a breadboard soon for some microphone pre-amplification, or even some ADC circuitry, so I’m hoping this will come in handy.