Breadboard & Breadboarding Basics : Before Arduino

Arduino Possibly a Very Good Approach But Unless the Basics Like Breadboard & Breadboarding is Known, All Will Suck Money For Simple Stuffs. Basic electronics stuff never cost a huge. A breadboard is just a base which is commonly used instead piece of wood to keep the things at one place. Another name of breadboard is plugboard as it has holes for connecting the ends of integrated circuits, registers, jumper wires or plain ends of the wires or even accommodate a circuit. As because this solder less design of breadboard does not need soldering, it is reusable but more smart than a plain wooden board. It is not that on a wooden board a basic electronics work can not be done. Without the breadboard, the work will become cumbersome and clumsy.

 

Breadboard & Breadboarding Basics : Before Arduino

 

So, first we need to know some basic theoretical part on this breadboard and then we will discuss what minimal components we need to work for simple works. This, honestly are more important to learn than starting from an Arduino board. When we were 7 years old, there was no Arduino. We also learned. Another set of things we talked was the list of tools needed for Arduino based electronics DIY projects. You probably not need to read the linked article at least for now, if you are a beginner. There is a typical feature cum description of a breadboard. It is kind of a “long question” in an examination. If you do not know it, you basically can get fooled by hundreds of sells selling stuffs all over the Internet.

A breadboard is a perforated block of plastic like material, the perforations has nickel silver alloy spring clips beneath. These clips are called tie points. The number of tie points is often given in the specification of the breadboard like – 400 connection points. The

The spacing between the clips is called lead pitch; it is typically 0.1 inch. This design helps to accommodate the Integrated circuits in the centerline of the breadboard block. When we are not using any IC, we can place the components and connecting wires at any place of the block. The clips can tolerate for 1 Ampere at 5 Volts and 0.333 Amperes at 15 volts ( that is 5 Watts). The main area which we are talking about has two arbitrary divided areas – one is for power supply and another is for placing the electronic components. The areas are called “strips”. The power supply parts are called bus strips and the main area consists of terminal strips. Plural because the “strips” are multiple. Thats a clever design. A bus strip typically contains two columns, one for ground and one for electricity supply.

In a good breadboard, a backing sheet can hold a number of binding posts to provide a better way to connect an external power supply. You understood that it is a good feature.

In the middle of a breadboard, a notch runs in parallel to the long side. It provides some airflow to DIP ICs. So basically it is like a graphing paper. We count the distance by mentioning how many clips away if we ever need to mention the distance. A good breadboard will have marking printed as – A, B, C, D, E and F, G, H, I and J. Another marking is numerical – 1 to 30. So, we can actually say “a15 clip is faulty” or “d17 clip is holding this”.

This the basics.

Now, you’ll see there are non numbered breadboards of various colors available. They are for bigger projects. They usually are sold as 4 boards with 4 colors and can be attached. The method increases the total area. Normally you’ll not need this one as a beginner.

Now the basic power supply. As labs can have bench top power supplies, older way was to use the boards with posts. These are mostly not used now in DIY works – a separate circuit is available to connect with USB or battery as two options of power supply.

 

Breadboard & Breadboarding Basics : What I will buy?

 

We will suggest to buy a good breadboard plus the kit to supply electricity – it is a small circuit. You are not buying the old traditional model of breadboard with posts. This “circuit current supply via USB” has a problem – it decreases the space on the board, otherwise it is actually good, versatile, mobile etc.

For lighting up a LED light, you need a 200-450 Ohm resistor for 9 volt supply. We can use 100 Ohm resistors to “control” the resistance. It is meaningless to do DIY without knowing the basic formulas of physics. Adafruit wrote that add a 450 Ohm resistor and you added it after purchasing from them is NOT electronics. It is gimmick.

To connect you need jumper wires.

The whole stuffs except the LED lamp, resistors we said are now sold as packages by the sellers and usually costs within $12. You need no extra effort to find them, searching with breadboard on Ebay, Amazon; you’ll get them. When you’ll buy jumper wires, resisters, LEDs etc. separately; it will cost you lesser.

Basically, you CAN build Arduino UNO on this board. That is known as building breadboard Arduino with USB programming ability. Breadboard built Arduino is good for small works.