ThePiKid wrote:Im buying a Adafruit Prototyping Pi Plate, which gives access to all ports
Your questions/statements are rather vague.
However - Yes, you can damage the GPIO pins on the Pi - you could concievably damage the devices you connect the Pi to too.
The first important bit of information is that the Pi's 3.3v and some peripherals 5v supplies do not mix. Do not connect a 5v peripheral to the Pi.
But after that, you make it up as you go along. What you connect and how you use it is up to you! There are 1000's of examples online now. For some easy starter stuff, have a look at:
https://projects.drogon.net/raspberry-pi/gpio-examples/ but there are lots of others out there too, not to mention many youtube videos now. Just google and Happy hardware hacking!
And you'll need a soldering iron with the Adafruit plate - this is what I did with mine:
https://projects.drogon.net/adafruit-pr ... bperry-pi/ (a work still in-progress...)
-Gordon