Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Getting Started with Breadboarding – Nick Raymond”.
Hey everyone uh welcome to the second day of maker faire. My name is nick raymond. I am a contributing editor at make. Um we’re going to be talking about getting started with breadboarding, so it’ll be a really basic uh low-level kind of entry. Uh talk.
So, let’s jump into it so to get started. Um i joined make magazine. I was an engineering intern there. I didn’t know much about electronics, didn’t know much about programming, but working there and working on the projects for the magazine eventually learned how to do some arduino programming learn some breadboarding skills, and so we’ll be talking about that, and so so my background.
I currently like to work with cnc machines and all my experience doing the red boarding has kind of helped me along to do some fabrication with that. I do some circuit building projects in my spare time, and so hopefully some of these tips and tricks will help you guys out. So if you’re not familiar with breadboarding, maybe some questions you have or why would i want to use a breadboard at all? How does it work, what is a breadboard um? What types of breadboards could i use for my project and then in the end, if we have some time, we can go off stage, talk about why the circuits don’t work or some tips and tricks for fixing it and then as well. As you know, once you have a breadboarded circuit, what’s the next step, so sometimes when you’re starting out with a project, and you want to fabricate a schematic, you find online or a project you may see in make magazine.
You’Ll start with a drawn schematic, and eventually you may reach some kind of jumbled wires on the top there, and somehow you want to make that into a final project that works and it looks nice and you can try to figure out where the problems are. The bottom picture is actually an example of the electronics that are in the little cnc kit that i’ve built purchased online and in the beginning, i’m sure they used a breadboard to fabricate the circuit first before they ever built anything make sure it was tested and working Properly and that’s usually the first step, we kind of start also, if you don’t take time and if you don’t aren’t careful with building your circuit, sometimes the end halfway through the project you’re going hey. I have a red wire here, a blue wire here.
Where do i connect them? What goes where uh? So, if you take your time in the beginning – and you lay things out on the breadboard nice and carefully in the end, when you’re trying to put it all together, it can really be helpful. So before we talk about how to use a breadboard i’ll just show some examples of what they would look like. Uh breadboard is just this solderless breadboard generic they’re sort of these perforated boards uh.
The top left-hand corner, is a really small breadboard. It could fit on top of a microcontroller like an arduino, and you can use that to sort of uh prototype really quick circuits from there. They get bigger and larger and more complicated um.
The top right hand corner is an example of a transparent wire, stylus breadboard. You can see the the metal connections kind of poking through the plastic there, and then you can even just mount a breadboard and a microcontroller onto the same board or piece of acrylic or maybe some plywood. Then you can have a mobile prototyping platform on your desk with the microcontroller and the breadboard for more work.
If you need larger space to make bigger circuits, they come in bigger sizes, you can actually just stack multiple breadboards together. This is an example of one you can buy from, i believe it’s digikey or sparkfun. They come together and you can basically just line them up and so that’s an example of three breadboards stacked together with some power rails. There’S a nice terminals that they’ve added to this larger breadboard. So you can tie in some sensors or some use some banana clips and then jump the banana clip sensors from the black and the green and the yellow and the red connections into the breadboard and make a sort of like another connection to your schematic. So once you sort of have a breadboard you’re working with this is actually an example of a program called fritzing.
It’S a virtual breadboard. You can use to place your schematics, so we’ll be using this to sort of demonstrate how a breadboard could be used. Um. One of the first things, you’ll note is a lot of perforated holes, and so the first set we’ll be using are the power rails and they run up and down the board on the sides, and so you can tie in your voltage source. So that could be a battery that could be a voltage source from your desktop and they run up and down the columns of the breadboard. The next set that you can use are the other sets of perforated holes and they actually go horizontally on that breadboard they’re.
The roads, so here we have an example of the red assuming the orange lights, illuminate all those orange connections, they’re all tied together, and so they would be on row five or row four uh, whereas the green connectors on the other side, the right hand side of The board, those are gon na, be placed near row 10.. So the way we use the breadboard is we plug in components into these holes, and then we jump wires from different connections and as long as we make sure that the wires are connected in the right pins, we’ll complete a circuit. So here’s a great example an illustration um by jodi colkin, who works with make um basic. How to use breadboard example. In the top right hand corner, you can see again the power rails, the battery is plugged in there and that’s providing voltage for those rails, and then you can plug in components like resistors, capacitors, leds, sensors and things like that, and we we physically build the schematic On the breadboard before we ever have to solder anything together and what we can do is we can basically reuse those components over and over again, once the circuit’s built it’s been tested, we can take those components off and reuse them not to buy them. Another major feature of the breadboard i didn’t mention is there’s usually a channel that runs down the middle of the bigger breadboards, and that is a physical divide that separates the left hand, side and the right hand side of the breadboard.
And so what you can do is you can use an integrated circuit, 555 timer chip, different sensors or other devices, and you place it and it straddles the middle of that channel and so all the legs kind of poke into different rails, and you can then apply Different uh wiring to that or components to connect it all up again. Another example of the power rails uh this time we’re using um different components like a resistor to connect to the integrated circuit in the top right hand, corner um, just another way to mount things with wires or different components, make connections but to kind of hammer. The idea home, here’s a really basic uh powerpoint example of my my fake breadboard um. We can see we have the rows. They’Re numbered one, two, three, four: five: six: seven eights uh the columns up top, sometimes they’re alphabetized by a b c d. Just so, you can get a nice grid to go and figure out exactly which pin you’re using so.
The next example is, i wanted to wire something up, and so, if i want to make a connection between the red wire and the green wire right now, they’re not connected, this would not be an incomplete connection. They’Re not in the same rows. However, if we make sure that each of the wires are plugged into the same row in this case row, seven that would be a complete connection and you can use wires, you could use other components, it’s still the same idea. The fundamentals of the breadboard are the same as long as in that same horizontal row, that’ll be a connection if we wanted to connect, perhaps the left-hand side of the breadboard to the right-hand side of the breadboard. You could also do this kind of a configuration, and here we have the red wire plugged into row, seven left-hand side, we’re using that yellow wire as a jumper to bridge across the two connections, and then the green wire is uh. Likewise, on the right hand, side of the board – this also would be a complete connection to whatever you’re wiring up, so you can purchase different sort of materials and components to plug into your breadboard. Usually, you’ll use a combination of wires and components. You can use solid core wire, which is really bendable. You can bend it into shapes and it’s really helpful because you can make the circuit really clean and organized. You can really easily find the traces if you use the stranded wire they’re, really flexible and they’re really convenient to use. However, sometimes like that first image, i showed you end up with kind of a mess of wires and it’s really hard to trace back and find the problems um. If you wanted to make your own connections, it’s really easy to buy a spool of 22 gauge solid core wire just strip the ends, maybe a half to a quarter, inch off that wire and you can just plug those directly into the breadboard.
If you use the stranded wire, sometimes they get a little frayed, it’s not so easy. But if you stick with that 22 gauge american wire gauge standard, it’s the right size and it fits in really nicely so that way, you can basically either buy these prepackaged components of different colors and different pre-cut lengths, or you can just make your own another handy Tool to have when you are breadboarding is a multimeter or a voltmeter. When you are making connections, it’s really handy to be able to verify that you have a complete connection using a continuity tester or you want to check and make sure that the voltage is being applied to your components. You can use a multimeter right, then there on the bench top instead of having to break apart the the breadboard take it apart and have to rebuild it. You can try to problem solve that in there just by following the traces in the schematic.
So it’s a really helpful tool to also have leave access to that and then, if you’re, able to actually accurately uh, take the schematic and put it onto the breadboard, all the components and once you have the circuit working, you may be able to just incorporate that. Breadboard into the final project, and so this is an example of a project from a maker camp, uh attendee, his name was timothy. He sent me a couple images of his project.
It was an arcade laptop, a prototype with an arduino and a hacked laptop and he was able to basically just add the arduino, add the breadboard wire everything up and he actually embedded the breadboard into the final project with a nice enclosure. So you can just use it, as is one thing to note, is sometimes with the stranded wire or the um. The connections, if you’re moving it around, say the maker faire or to show off to your friends. Sometimes those connections kind of wiggle loose really easily and then it’s really hard to find out what’s missing. So what you can do is uh. You can actually go ahead and then perf board or have your own circuit boards made. So that’s kind of the next evolution of what you could do.
You can use a program like fritzing to basically take the physical representation of what you have on the breadboard. You can model it in the freeware for the same computer program. You can see the arduino, the leds, the breadboard and from the fritzing program.
They’Ll, actually help you to create a schematic, which you could then use to share with your friends or share online, and you can even learn how to layout pcbs. If you wanted to have those fabricated or make your own and then you could actually solder everything together, have a nice circuit board, that’s already made for you and then your project is kind of uh, more robust if you’re going to be showing it off so uh. In closing, the main thing i can say in the three 15 minutes i have is is breadboarding is really it’s a skill set, and so you’ll start with the schematic. You’Ll have to struggle at the beginning to understand what the components mean, but if you keep on practicing and you keep on using it, you’ll develop tips and tricks to help you and figure out, really how to place the components and how to read the schematics better. There’S also a lot of online tutorials and we also have the maker shed the make electronics book. It’S a great resource.
Getting started tells you about the components it tells you about the breadboarding process and also how to solder. So at this point in time, if there were any particular questions, i might be able to answer a couple of those um. Otherwise, i’m also located at the make tent uh over across just through these doors, i’d be happy to answer any specific questions as well. Otherwise, thanks for your time – and i hope you enjoy the fair .