Because the Arduino (and Basic Stamp) are 5V devices, and most modern sensors, displays, flash cards and modes are 3.3V-only, many makers find that they need to perform level shifting/conversion to protect the 3.3V device from 5V.Although one can use resistors to make a divider, for high speed transfers, the resistors can add a lot of slew and cause havoc that is tough to debug. For that reason, we like using 4050/74LVX245 series and similar logic to perform proper level shifting. Only problem is that they are only good in one direction which can be a problem for some specialty bi-diectional interfaces and also makes wiring a little hairy.That's where this lovely chip, the TXB0108 bi-directional level converter comes in! This chip perform bidirectional level shifting from pretty much any voltage to any voltage and will auto-detect the direction. Only thing that doesn't work well with this chip is i2c (because it uses strong pullups which confuse auto-direction sensor). If you need to use pullups, you can but they should be at least 50K ohm - the ones internal to AVRs/Arduino are about 100K ohm so those are OK! Its a little more luxurious than a 74LVX245 but if you just don't want to worry about directional pins this is a life saver!Since this chip is a special bi-directional level shifter it does not have strong output pins that can drive LEDs or long cables, it's meant to sit on a breadboard between two logic chips! If you do not need instant bi-directional support, we suggest the 74LVX245 as below which has strong output drive.This breakout saves you from having to solder the very fine pitch packages that this chip comes with. We also add 0.1uF caps onto both sides and a 10K pull-up resistor on the output enable pin so you can use it right out of the box!

Because the Arduino (and Basic Stamp) are 5V devices, and most modern sensors, displays, flash cards and modes are 3.3V-only, many makers find that they need to perform level shifting/conversion to protect the 3.3V device from 5V.We do have some other handy level shifters in the shop, from the DIP 74LVC245 to the fancy bi-directional TXB0108. However, neither of these are happy to work with I2C, which uses a funky pull-up system to transfer data back and forth. This level shifter board combines the ease-of-use of the bi-directional TXB0108 with an I2C-compatible FET design following NXP's app note.This breakout has 4 BSS138 FETs with 10K pullups. It works down to 1.8V on the low side, and up to 10V on the high side. The 10K's do make the interface a little more sluggish than using a TXB0108 or 74LVC245 so we suggest checking those out if you need high-speed transfer.While we designed it for use with I2C, this works as well for  TTL Serial,  slow <2MHz SPI, and any other digital interface both uni-directional and bidirectional. Comes with a fully assembled, and tested PCB with 4 full bidirectional converter lines as well as 2 pieces of 6-pin header you can solder on to plug into a breadboard or perfboard.

You just found the perfect I2C sensor, and you want to wire up two or three or more of them to your Arduino when you realize "Uh oh, this chip has a fixed I2C address, and from what I know about I2C, you cannot have two devices with the same address on the same SDA/SCL pins!" Are you out of luck? You would be, if you didn't have this ultra-cool TCA9548A 1-to-8 I2C multiplexer!

Finally, a way to get up to 8 same-address I2C devices hooked up to one microcontroller - this multiplexer acts as a gatekeeper, shuttling the commands to the selected set of I2C pins with your command.

Using it is fairly straight-forward: the multiplexer itself is on I2C address 0x70 (but can be adjusted from 0x70 to 0x77) and you simply write a single byte with the desired multiplexed output number to that port, and bam - any future I2C packets will get sent to that port. In theory, you could have 8 of these multiplexers on each of 0x70-0x77 addresses in order to control 64 of the same-I2C-addressed-part.

Like all Adafruit breakouts, we put this nice chip on a breakout for you so you can use it on a breadboard with capacitors, and pullups and pulldowns to make usage a snap. Some header is required and once soldered in you can plug it into a solderless-breadboard. The chip itself is 3V and 5V compliant so you can use it with any logic level.

We even wrote up a nice tutorial with wiring diagrams, schematics and examples to get you running in 10 minutes!