Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Skillbuilder: Breadboarding Basics – getting started in electronics”.
Breadboards, you’ve probably heard of them, and you probably love them – they’re great for testing out some of your ideas as lower fidelity prototypes before actually committing to them. Some people, mainly students like myself, even tend to use them in high fidelity prototypes. Instead of you know, soldering or printing, a pcb, like their professor, told them to, but no matter what end of the spectrum you’re on knowing the basic breadboarding concepts and how to cleanly execute upon them is essential in building your projects. Hi, i’m allison check out my channel link down below, and this is breadboarding basics for effective prototyping. This is a standard size, solderless breadboard.
It contains a series of holes about a tenth of an inch apart where components can be inserted in to create fully functioning electrical circuits. Now, these breadboards are made up of a series of metal strips which facilitate both mechanical and electrical connections between components. This breadboard has two top and bottom power rails with metal strips running lengthwise horizontally across the rails. These are meant to be used by your power supply to provide power to the components on the board, the rest of the breadboard, where you’ll want to place.
These components is made up of vertical columns of those same metal strips with the concept that two holes on the same metal strip are electrically connected. Here’S an example of a quick prototype circuit that we can make using an arduino some push buttons, a breadboard and a couple of resistors. Now this is great and all, but it’s kind of ugly for lower fidelity prototypes. You might be able to get away with it, but it would be much easier to use and iterate upon if we cleaned it up.
So let’s talk best practices for clean, breadboarding: hey you are? You subscribed to make magazine? Yet if you like this kind of video of projects and stuff to build, you are gon na love, make magazine, it comes out quarterly and it is packed full of tips and tricks, full projects that you can recreate and feature pieces explaining. How makers are changing the world for the better? You can find information on how to subscribe in a multitude of ways, digital or get the actual print edition in your mailbox at the link above the link below in the description now back to the video first off tools generally you’ll need the following basics: a wire Stripper this one’s adjustable and for the cleanest strip, you’ll want to adjust it to the gauge of the wire a wire cutter, while our wire stripper is also a cutter you’re going to want something a bit more accurate. If you really want to clean up your prototypes needle nose pliers, these always come in handy, especially when you’re trying to grip a small component and finally wires.
Now, let’s talk wires, there’s a bunch of different wires that you can get there’s the basic 22 gauge wire that you get in spoolies, then there’s jumper cables that are fixed length but convenient because you don’t have to strip them. Then there’s these kits that you’ll often get full of pre-cut wires at specific lengths. Now listen.
These sound like they would be useful, but if you’re trying to build a really clean circuit chances are the lengths that they have here, don’t actually match the lengths that you need so kits. Like these end up sitting in your drawer collecting dust waiting to be shown off like and here’s where i keep assorted lengths of wire whoa instead, let’s talk about how you can clean up your circuits with the basic uncut 22 gauge spoolie wire, starting with this connection, To clean it up, we want something: that’s exactly the right length for its purpose, step. One is to strip the wire adjust your wire strippers to the correct gauge, then you’re going to want to feed about a quarter of an inch of wire through the strippers squeeze lightly. Until you feel yourself cut through the insulation without nicking the wire itself, then pull it’ll take some practice, but you should eventually see a pretty clean cut.
Now we’re going to take our needle nose, pliers and bend the exposed wire to a 90 degree angle then insert it into the appropriate position on our breadboard. Next, we want to eyeball exactly how long the other end of our wire needs to be. Generally. The rule of thumb is you’ll need another three holes past your desired location, so measure that out and cut it with your cutters, we’re going to strip another quarter inch off the end of this wire.
We just cut bend it to a 90 degree angle and voila. You’Ve cleaned up your wiring. We can repeat this not only for the other wires on our breadboard, but also some of the components like resistors and there you have it our cleaner working circuit. Hopefully you can find ways to apply these tips to your own projects.
If you do, let us know in the comments, also feel free to check out my own channel linked down below. Finally, if you like this type of content, make sure to like the video and subscribe to make and we’ll see you in the next one bye, you .