Headerless GPIO

[pmamatsis]

Hi to everyone. I am a complete newbie on electrical engineering and I would like to ask a maybe silly question. I have seen in some development boards that in all the gpio instead of pins there are just the little holes. Can please somebody explain to me how these can be useful? Up to now when I wanted some kind of I/O from a board I just used one of the soldered pins.

Thanks in advance,
Panos.

P.S. Again my apologies if the question sounds silly!

[pmamatsis]

Maybe test pads.

Hi @blueskull and thank you so much for your quick response. Can you please send me a link in order to read a bit about it?

Thanks in advance,
Panos.

[plazma]

Maybe they are holes for soldering a pin header.

[pmamatsis]

Maybe they are holes for soldering a pin header.

Hi guys and again thanks for getting back to me so quickly. To give you an example...I am seeing in eBay some Arduino shields that they come in two "versions" one is with the pins soldered and the other is without any pins at all. I was just thinking that maybe there is a more "special" usage for the ones without pins.

Again I am sorry for my so general question but I cannot yet grasp the why some boards do not have gpio pins but they just have the holes into which you can solder the pins yourself.

Panos.

[SeanB]

No pins there is just to reduce the cost, and as well some people build the board into a larger project, so not having the pins allows them to just use wire and not having to fiddle with a socket in a fixed single use application.

[chickenHeadKnob]

Maybe they are holes for soldering a pin header.

Hi guys and again thanks for getting back to me so quickly. To give you an example...I am seeing in eBay some Arduino shields that they come in two "versions" one is with the pins soldered and the other is without any pins at all. I was just thinking that maybe there is a more "special" usage for the ones without pins.

Again I am sorry for my so general question but I cannot yet grasp the why some boards do not have gpio pins but they just have the holes into which you can solder the pins yourself.

Panos.

when you become more experienced you will find the boards that do not have anything pre-soldered more desirable as then you have the flexibility  of choosing your own header type: male, female, right angle , long wire wrap length pins ect. you can also then choose the  board side the connector faces.

[pmamatsis]

Maybe they are holes for soldering a pin header.

Hi guys and again thanks for getting back to me so quickly. To give you an example...I am seeing in eBay some Arduino shields that they come in two "versions" one is with the pins soldered and the other is without any pins at all. I was just thinking that maybe there is a more "special" usage for the ones without pins.

Again I am sorry for my so general question but I cannot yet grasp the why some boards do not have gpio pins but they just have the holes into which you can solder the pins yourself.

Panos.

when you become more experienced you will find the boards that do not have anything pre-soldered more desirable as then you have the flexibility  of choosing your own header type: male, female, right angle , long wire wrap length pins ect. you can also then choose the  board side the connector faces.

Good morning to everyone,
   @chickenHeadKnob this means that you can solder more than just header pins in these little holes ? Like for the example the female connectors thar Arduino UNO has ? So this is what @SeanB means when he said in his post earlier that maybe you want to put it in a larger design project !!! Wow thank you so much guys ! Now i understand more things. Of course needless to say that i don't know how to solder, that's why all my electronic parts must have pins  but later on i am planning to buy my own solder iron so i learn how to do that too !!! 

Hm...@chickenHeadKnob is it possible for you to send me some links with photos for these other things that somebody can solder on the pcb ?

Thank you again and
best regards,
Panos.