ALIENS! Making Your Circuit Boards Into Multiuse Protoboards!

Intro: ALIENS! Making Your Circuit Boards Into Multiuse Protoboards!

I like to make wearable technology and I don't want to be limited by the shape, size, and pins made on a board if I want to use it. The DFRobot ESP32-C3 boards are a great size: SMALL, but I want them to be wearable ready too!

Using this technique of soldering super soft silicon wire to the pinholes in the board. from there you can get creative too and I've soldered these metal ring terminals to the ends of the wire. This means I can use croc clips, or sew with conductive thread to make my circuit! Simple and adds great functionality. You could add crock clip ends or whatever you want to your board.

This will make it great for prototyping many different circuits, then you just get a new board and pop it in your project after you've prototyped it. Keep this board as your prototyper! Let's check out how to do it.

STEP 1: Prepare Your Wire

Preparing your wire all at once will make soldering a little quicker. This way you don't have to stop and then strip a wire, then solder then stop etc. Let's follow these steps:

1. Cut your wire into the correct number of pieces for your board. I need 16 pieces.
2. After you have cut them all the same, strip the ends off one side of the wire. You can use wire strippers or wire cutters. Silicone wire when it's thin, you can also typically just use your fingertips to remove the ends.
3. Do this for all the wires.

STEP 2: Solder to Your Microcontroller Board

Now that your wires are prepared. Mount your microcontroller board with a helping hands or similar device to hold it securely in place. This will make soldering a lot easier.

Twist the wire ends that you stripped earlier. To be able to push them through the small hole for the header pins, you'll need to twist stranded wires.

After they are twisted,

• push the wire through the hole of the pin you want to solder. I'll start on one side and work my way through all the pins.
• I'm going to push the wire through the top and solder on the bottom side.

Don't worry if the wire that you stripped is too long, we will trim this after we solder.

• solder the wires to the pins

After they have been soldered, cut or trim the ends of the wires. This is shown at the end of the video I included. Cut the ends where you soldered to trim them so they are neat and won't cause any bridges, or places where the wires might touch.

STEP 3: Repeat!

Following the same steps as you've just completed, twist the ends of the wires, thread them through the microcontroller pin holes and solder to the board.

Trim these as well when you have completed it.

STEP 4: Adding Alien Tentacles!

...sort of... now that we have the silicone wires on both sides of the microcontroller, let's add the tips to the wires.

Decide what 'tips' you want. There are copper, open-ended, crocodile, and more. I'm using

• metal ring terminals: 0.5-1.5mm2-AWG22-16 screw dia 3.2, for these protoboards

This size suits my projects and the wearable aspect very well. Let's follow a few steps to add them:

1. Strip the ends of the wires. I will do this in 2 steps as we did previously. This helps to keep the wires in a better condition as they can sometimes break off if they are exposed for too long and we are moving it a lot. I'll strip one side first. Tip: Strip off a little longer than usual we will be folding it in half to push into the ring terminals so we need more wire.
2. Twist the wire ends.
3. Fold the twisted wire in half.
4. I'm using heat shrink to make the connection even more stable. So I'll pull the heat shrink over the wire at this step.
5. Once the heat shrink is on, push the folded wire through and only just slightly poking out of the edge of the ring terminal. We will solder this wire to the terminal.
6. Solder the wire to the terminal.

I would suggest take your time. Enjoy this process. Soldering on these ends one by one takes time and effort, but it's rewarding and enjoyable. I find it relaxing!

STEP 5: Repeat!

Now that you have finished adding the ends to one side of the wires and boardm=, do the same again - to the other side.

Don't forget you may want to add heat shrink to make this a more robust prototyping board.

STEP 6: Woop! You're All Done!

The only thing left to do is use your new prototyping wearable microcontroller board. I attach crocodile clips to it to get rapid prototyping, but you might even want to swap out these new tips for crocodile clips themselves!

I hope you had fun and have made an Alien too. Try different colour wires, thicknesses, and other boards too. I'm making these for all the different boards I have!

To see more of my projects and wearables, visit http://christinefarion.com, follow me on Instagram, and Twitter is great if you have any questions or comments!

Wearable Electronics items purchased from Tinker Tailor.

Comments

[BigWilt]

Hi! Nice project! You could try to use different wire lengths on each pin to prevent from unintended connection between the pins!

[CMoz]

Hey - yes that's a great idea!I was going to sew these ring terminals to fabric with conductive thread, so use it as part of the design feature. For a more practical solution different lengths - and coloring (e.g. red for power, black for gnd) would be a good addition. I will do this for my next one!

[jaybo2099]

Use JST connectors, then it's just a matter of plug and play. You could turn your metal ring terminal lines into mini extension cords. Just have the ring terminal on one end and the JST on the other. Then you can just pop things on and off from your board.

I like your thinking on this one!

[CMoz]

So smart! there are loads of ways to adapt this. Initially, I was getting frustrated with soldering a board and then prototyping with it, and then finding I didn't want the pin headers etc, so now I'll turn 1 board into the prototyper and it's quick and easy to use. I'm sure I'll adapt it to more types of connector ends - crocodile clips :D Thanks for commenting!

[bdk6]

This is a really nifty idea. I can think of lots of possibilities with it. Thanks!

[CMoz]

Thanks so much. Would love ot see photos if you make ends like this!