4tronix CubeBit Base Plate

A great Base for your Cube:Bit allowing easy connection of power and signal and directly able to plug in Micro:Bit or Raspberry Pi Zero.

These bases have been especially designed to accept all 3 sizes of Cube:Bit and provide a simple method of powering them. In addition, there is a level shifter to take the 3.3V signal from Microbit or Raspberry Pi to the 5V used on the FireLeds.

Because a lot of LEDs uses a lot of power, neither the Microbit nor the Raspberry Pi can power them directly. We therefore provide this base plate that allows you to connect the 5V power in 4 different ways:

1. DC Jack using a standard 2.1mm (centre positive) DC Jack you can simply plug in a 5V DC power supply such as these.
2. Micro USB connector. Get yourself a high power USB power supply (such as the official 2.5A Raspberry Pi power supply) and simply plug it in.
3. Crocodile/alligator clip positions allow you to connect power and signal using croc clips - eg from a Crumble, MicroBit or similar.
4. GVS pins allow you to take a standard 3-pin 2.54mm female cable and plug it directly in. Eg from an Arduino sensor shield or directly from a 4duino Pro.

There is a 40pin GPIO header that you can plug a Raspberry Pi Zero into and it will be powered from the 5V and connect on GPIO 12 (pin 18) to the FireLeds array. This is the standard pin for driving FireLeds on the Raspberry Pi. Note that there isn't room to fit a full-size Raspberry Pi (though with a GPIO cable you could do that as well).

There is also a microbit connector so you can plug your microbit straight in. This is powered via the 3.3V voltage regulator from the 5V so no separate power is required for the micro:Bit. This connects on Pin 0 to the Cube:Bit FireLeds.

As you can see, an extremely flexible and useful addition to your Cube:Bit.