Connecting to Raspberry Pi GPIO pins

This is a really basic question. Yes, we do have a soldering iron but haven’t really used it with anything as complicated as a circuit board.

We have a Raspberry Pi 3 and want to connect another component to the GPIO pins. It’s actually the AdaFruit Ultimate GPS Breakout (was going to put liink, but limited to 2 in first post). I realise there is a Pi HAT version of that product but for space reasons we’d rather use the breakout board version. So obviously we have to connect TX, RX, VIN and GND as a minimum to the GPIO pins. Some of the GPIO pins are being used by another little board, which plugs in via a little 2 x 3 pin female header.

The question is, what product do I need to buy to connect the Raspberry Pi and the breakout board? I’ve found the Jumper Jerky which has the female socket at one end that could be pushed onto the GPIO pins, but we don’t really need the plug bit at the other end. I suppose I could cut that off, strip the wire and solder to the breakout board? Or perhaps just solder the male end of the Jumper Jerky lead direct to the breakout board?

Another option might be to buy a 2 x 20 socket, and cut it down because we already have another board plugged in on some of the other pins. I can’t find a single socket of the right size, but there’s a variety pack that might be the cheapest option. Not sure! With that option we’d need some wire to go from the socket to the breakout board. Don’t know whether it has to be anything special: I may have a reel of thin flex lying around in the garage.

So basically I’d just like some quick pointers to how people normally devise a means of plugging stuff like this into a Raspberry Pi in a non-permanent way (i.e. so I’m not soldering direct to GPIO pins and can unplug the breakout board from the Raspberry Pi).

Thanks.

An alternative to jumper jerky that we use are these individual jumper cables that come in M-M, M-F and F-F versions.

In terms of socket, I tend to just buy strips of the header pins from eBay and build up my own shapes on veroboard. I did that to a IMU module (whose pins didn’t line up exactly) so I could sit it directly on the Pi:

Hope that helps.

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