My Top Ten Most Useful Breadboard Tips and Tricks

Step 6 Pullup Resistors

Anyone messing with electronics will be familiar with pullup/down resistors. It wasn't so bad in the good old days when 1/4 watt resistors had nice sturdy leads on them. Due to the increased demand for copper, these parts are now made with skinny leads that don't hold up to repeated use as well as they used to.

These pullup resistors are made the same way as the LED's and will last indefinitely.

It's also nice to have some 10k bussed network resistors on hand, for when you need to pullup an entire row of IC pins or buttons!

Comments

[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.

[geeklord]

so thats what those are called, network resistors. Good I learned something useful.