DIY PCB Tip by LOG

This Lazy Old Geek has been using Arduinos for a while and I recently made my own shield for my weather station.

Tip: So my Arduino shield had some room on it. I decided to add some breadboarding area in case I wanted to expand the weather station.

I added a 16 pin IC socket and four eight pin connector strips, some tied together. This can be used for 16, 14 or 8 pin ICs. For most ICs, the upper left pin 14 or 16 is power so I connected that strip across the three connectors on that side. Usually, the ground is on the lower left side so I did the same for both.
For the other IC pins, I ran traces just to the first adjacent connector.
So for future usage, adding an IC would be relatively easy. There is space for additional components and pins can be jumpered and traces cut as needed.

Advantages: Easy to implement, no additional cost in PCB making, minimal labor. Holes don’t need to be drilled until used.

Use: So I used this tip to create my Arduino weather shield. See first picture.