My Top Ten Most Useful Breadboard Tips and Tricks

There's 6 inches of snow on the ground, and you're cooped up in the house. You have momentarily lost your motivation to work on your GPS-guided metal-cutting laser. There haven't been any new projects on your favorite site which have piqued your interest. What to do with yourself?

Well, how bout pimping up your breadboard and turning it into a lean, mean, digital-development machine?

This is a short list of the most useful breadboard tricks that I have picked up over the years. Hopefully there's something in here that you will find useful which you haven't already thought of.

Ok, I don't really have 10 tips to share; it just makes for a catchier title. :P

Step 1: Power connector

Well, the first thing that a breadboard needs is power. Many breadboards come with binding posts. This is fine if you care to use them. But you still have to plug the wires into the board. I have messed this part up on occasion, mixing up the power and ground wires. Even though rare, this has usually resulted in rather annoying and/or expensive consequences. The solution I came up with is to always use 3-pin connectors.

See the following picture. It's made from SIP header pins and protoboard. After point-to-point wiring, it is covered with sculpting epoxy.

Comments

[dmanmoka]

Thanks gread idea...but whats the password for the video? :)

[klee27x]

I changed the link. It should play without a password, now. Thanks for bringing that to my attention.

[TampaGeek]

Great stuff! But the link to your video for the LED "headers" doesn't work. :( It's asking for a password to a private Photobucket account. I'd really like to see how you did those.

[klee27x]

Sorry. Photobucket seems to have changed the file name extension on all my vids. I have looked but can't find this particular vid.

[tim127]

what is the difference between a pullup resistor and a regular resistor

[klee27x]

"Pullup" is descriptive. I just means that the resistor is used to pull a high impedance input pin (that would otherwise be floating) to the power rail. The pullup/down resistor is quite commonly used, often for input pins or for open-drain outputs.

It would be impractical to try to make a set of resistors that would work for all your analog uses. There, you using a wide range of resistances which are often specifically tailored to produce exact voltages. But for the common pullup/down, 10k will pretty much work, anywhere.

[axeman911]

awesome really helpful thanx!

[coleyy]

push the foam back in and tape or glue it

[fritsie123]

Those little PCB's for your bread board are commonly called "BreadOut" boards. For some other examples see: http://www.startronics.nl/?page_id=39

Nice job on the InCircuit Programmer, by the way!

[PKM]

Are the ones for inputs call InBread? /terrible pun Every time I see a project like this it makes me want to get my own breadboard/IC stuff and start hacking on electronics. Maybe a trip to Maplin is in order while it's still winter...

[dreadengineer]

I recommend frys.com for breadboards; they have one for $6 that is about half the size of the one in this instructable, and they can lock together to make bigger sizes. They're cheap enough that I usually just leave projects on them instead of transferring to a soldered breadboard. Here's a link to it:
http://shop3.frys.com/product/4612388;jsessionid=CVZB6s0oXjB6nv7dFdydxg**.node3?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

[klee27x]

Yeah, I have one project that is permanently breadboarded. It covers an entire double breadboard, and I just don't want to redo it! For anything much smaller I usually like to solder something together. And by "like" I mean I actually enjoy soldering, for what it's worth.

If you go through a lot of these, you might wanna try these guys:
http://www.mpja.com/prodinfo.asp?number=4443+TE.

I just love this company. The customer service is excellent.

[DavidRobertson]

Just out of curiosity, what is your residential solderless-breadboard project?

[klee27x]

um, for some reason the link doesn't work. Enter "breadboard" into the search engine and you'll find it. Same thing for $4.95, as of 2/8/09. $3.95 per for 10 or more.

[mummywan]

Hahaha.. Nice one! i've learned a lot! THANKS very much .

[XylophonicMonkey]

Green stuff FTW!

[Arduino Guy]

i dont think that tape alone will hold the small clips in the breadboard. shouldn't there  be more stuff to hold the clips? because there will be a drop because the foam is taken away and it probably it will be hard to insert wires.

[klee27x]

I dunno. I have used this type of breadboard without any backing at all, and have never inadvertently pushed out a clip.

I've intentionally removed clips, before. So I can tell you they are wedged in there pretty tight. You CAN push them out from the front, using a needle vice. But I bet you can't pop one out with a jumper wire (or a needle) using just your bare hands - meaning no pliers or thimble!

(If you ever really want to remove one, it's a lot easier to pry them out from the back using a small jeweler's screwdriver. :))

[abartky]

Thanks for the video, wish I could solder like that ;-) As a hardware newbie I didn't recognize all the tools you were using. What tool were you using to cut the board (looks like scissors) and what was in the syringe? Also on the dremel, which bit were you using? Thanks in advance :-)

[klee27x]

Yeah, those were just scissors for the main cuts. PCB 0.03" and thinner is pretty easy to cut. I trimmed the excess off the sides with a pair of strong shears, because of the extra solder bead I had to cut through. I filled the syringe with zinc chloride, an aggressive soldering flux. That is how I'm able to "paint" those pin connections so easily. What you don't see is that after the video, I ran the circuit under the faucet to wash off the residue. Zinc chloride is a common plumber's flux, for soldering copper pipes. It should be used with care for electrical work, because the residue is conductive and corrosive. I mainly use it for tough connections (nails, battery terminals) or for awkward joints that would otherwise require 3 hands. The bit I was using in the Dremel is a tungsten carbide cutting bit. It was actually labeled as a "grout removal" bit. I've never removed grout, but it looked wicked aggressive, and it turned out to be just great. The less aggressive cutting bits leave a smoother edge but can take a longgg time to get the same volume of cutting... esp with a battery powered Dremel. You're welcome!

[Macka]

DIP switches tend to rock around on the breadboard and don't slide very easily, but they do save a lot of space. I find they are easier to toggle by using a retractable ballpoint pen. Retract the "nib" and then use the end to slide the switches.

[mikeeve]

The instructions are somewhat sketchy. The SIP pins, resistor, and LED are soldered to a small rectangle of copper clad. The engraver is used to divide the rectangle into 3 electrically disconnected surfaces by removing 2 thin lines of copper from the rectangle. Right? Thought this might help anyone as inexperienced as me.

[klee27x]

Yes, you understand the idea. I actually just cut a strip of board a half inch in width. Then I etched 2 lines along the length of the strip. Then I soldered the pins, cut board, solder pins, cut, etc.... Then I used a piece of the leftover plastic from the SIP headers as a jig to hold the things while soldering the other bits on, so the legs wouldn't move anywhere.

[klee27x]

(removed by author or community request)

[mikeeve]

Thanks! That really helps. I picked up a couple of other little techniques from that short video. Just goes to prove the old saying, "A flash video is worth 3 megabytes!"

[jomaro]

Very good i'ble. Definitively!

[garagemonkeysan]

Great Instructable! I finally got a chance to build a few of the LED BreadOuts. Very useful! Thanks for sharing!

[TheZuke!]

I stop by Instructables about every day. This one is the coolest one I've seen in a long time.

[russ_hensel]

Nice. Be careful you do not go too far and end up with a printed circuit development board. I have been using headers for a while to mount components, but you have few tricks I had not figured out. I do have an additional one: take a dual right angle header Straighten out the right angle bit to make two rows that span the center gap on the board and plug it in. This can now be used with old hard drive cables to let you plug and unplug 20 or so connections at a time. I will try to get a photo of this in the near future. (You have to span the center or the pins in the same row are connected together.)

[russ_hensel]

Pictures of this at:

http://www.opencircuits.com/Solderless_protoboard

[mdgnys]

oops sorry its allelectronics.com They finally bought the other domain name!

[mdgnys]

All of you would love this store that I go to almost every other day! Here's their site allelectronics.org

[charlie_r]

Coolness!! Thanks for the ideas!

[Goodhart]

I really like #3 ....now if I can get a magnifying glass strong enough so I can see those parts......

[cfishy]

Great tip! But I can't do surface mount...

[geeklord]

im thinkin really thin solder helps with that.

[osgeld]

and a dot of super glue, just make sure its right and working beforehand

[casshan]

If you've got some alligator clips laying around, those work for holding components on boards, too. I use them at work to keep things where I want them when I'm soldering.

[briefer]

Actually, you can take a "dot" of solder resin and use it to hold the SMT part down long enough to get at least one or two pins soldered. You can get small containers of solder resin at Radio Shack. Dip a dot out with a tooth pick and use it as "glue" to hold down the smt piece.

[obeyken]

This rules. You rule. Rock on.