Step 5: Building the Breadboard
Alright, now onto the real electronics!
The wiring in this project is actually quite simple, and doesn't require any knowledge of electrical engineering at all! Let's assemble that circuit:
Get your breadboard out (this is going to control all the LED's in our clock), and grab your 220 Ohm resistors. Using the wire snips, we recommend cutting the legs of each resistor down to size (about half). This ensures that none of the resistors snag on any of the other wires, or short the circuit. Push the resistors into the breadboard (we separated the resistors by a single rail in order to make wiring easier, straddling the "valley" in the breadboard. Though this isn't necessary, it allows us to gap that valley and connect both the top and bottom of the breadboard's rails, giving us more space to wire up components later on). Now look on the back - you should see some adhesive taping. Remove the protective film, and attach the breadboard to the Connect 4 box (see picture). Try to center it along the LED's we inserted in the previous steps. In the case that your breadboard does not have an adhesive backing, simply glue it to the board!
Now that the breadboard is attached to the box, get your wire out and start measuring a positive (red) and negative (black) length of wire from each resistor to each LED. You must wire the positive terminal of each LED to one of the 13 resistors in the breadboard. The ground lead of the LED can be wired to the universal ground rail on the breadboard. After the wires are measured, stick one end into the breadboard and twist the other end around the appropriate LED lead.
The way you wire the circuit is extremely important. From the point of view of the back of the box (looking at the side with the LED leads coming out), the left-most resistor (dubbed #1), should be wired to the bottom LED in the left-most column. Resistor #2 should be wired to the 2nd LED up that same column, and so forth. You want to work up and complete wiring each column before moving from left to right.
The wiring in this project is actually quite simple, and doesn't require any knowledge of electrical engineering at all! Let's assemble that circuit:
Get your breadboard out (this is going to control all the LED's in our clock), and grab your 220 Ohm resistors. Using the wire snips, we recommend cutting the legs of each resistor down to size (about half). This ensures that none of the resistors snag on any of the other wires, or short the circuit. Push the resistors into the breadboard (we separated the resistors by a single rail in order to make wiring easier, straddling the "valley" in the breadboard. Though this isn't necessary, it allows us to gap that valley and connect both the top and bottom of the breadboard's rails, giving us more space to wire up components later on). Now look on the back - you should see some adhesive taping. Remove the protective film, and attach the breadboard to the Connect 4 box (see picture). Try to center it along the LED's we inserted in the previous steps. In the case that your breadboard does not have an adhesive backing, simply glue it to the board!
Now that the breadboard is attached to the box, get your wire out and start measuring a positive (red) and negative (black) length of wire from each resistor to each LED. You must wire the positive terminal of each LED to one of the 13 resistors in the breadboard. The ground lead of the LED can be wired to the universal ground rail on the breadboard. After the wires are measured, stick one end into the breadboard and twist the other end around the appropriate LED lead.
The way you wire the circuit is extremely important. From the point of view of the back of the box (looking at the side with the LED leads coming out), the left-most resistor (dubbed #1), should be wired to the bottom LED in the left-most column. Resistor #2 should be wired to the 2nd LED up that same column, and so forth. You want to work up and complete wiring each column before moving from left to right.
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