How do you guys approach perfing and breadboarding?

[jimmybjj]

This subject stems from my last post about "What do you guys do with circuits that you didn't like?" and i had the revelation that i need to breadboard more  My problem is i am still fairly new to electronics in general so i am still figuring things out. I understand how to use a breadboard and i am currently reading RG's book about audio PCB's but that doesn't help me much concerning breadboards. The only way i understand using a breadboard is to make it look like the schematic and this does not work if your doing a circuit of any complexity at all, and i certainly can't use the methodology described in the book. So my questions as stated in the topic title, How do you guys approach perfing and breadboarding? I don't need a total ABC approach from everyone (although that would be nice too  ) but any little tips and ideas are appreciated too.

Thanks for any help guys.

[Brymus]

I too follow the schematic on my breadboard.
A little practice will be your best source of wisdom for this.
I also have RG's book and I think it is applicable to breadboarding at least in a space saving sense.
One thing that may help you is to make a power supply with a voltage divider to get Vref for opamps and such.
ROG has one you can make,this could save you a little space.
Use your busses wisely,make a station and pre wire your pots,jacks and switches, then mount them in your breadboard station.
Of course nothing beats more breadboards,I wish I had two or three more...

The beginers section(right next to it) has a step by step tutorial for breadboarding a distortion courtesy Gausmarkov.
Very helpful. http://diystompboxes.com/projects/power.html  and here http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?board=33.0

So does Beavis Audio ,his breadboarding tuts are really great for beginers, look here http://www.beavisaudio.com/bboard/docs/HackersGuideToTheBeavisBoard.pdf
I love the way he shows how to layout the projects on the breadboard,not just a schematic and layout.
And here http://www.beavisaudio.com/

One thing I have noticed is everyone approaches it differently.
Search the forum I think there was a thread about peoples breadboard stations and you could get some ideas from that too.

[Top Top]

I am breadboarding a simple synth that I am designing right now (second thing I have ever designed on a breadboard). Other than these two, I have not really breadboarded FX that I build - I have only built things that I already know I will like (from clips).

I can't really say I have a technique... unfortunately, my technique is plop things down and then rearrange it when I need space and have squandered what I have...

Oh, that and run lots of jumper wires from one part to another... 

When designing something from scratch or from parts assembled from different building blocks, I can't see that you really have much option but to just put things down and rearrange them if it gets unruly on there. It's hard to say where things are going to end up when you start.

[candidate]

If a hole on the breadboard won't accept a component, use a different hole.  Don't cram it in there.  Sometimes this means moving an entire opamp or getting more jumpers.

Don't shove components in further than they need to go (diodes with their skinny leads).

One thing that may help you is to make a power supply with a voltage divider to get Vref for opamps and such.
ROG has one you can make,this could save you a little space.

Use your busses wisely,

nothing beats more breadboards,

[petemoore]

  A booster in a box...somehow have one, perhaps a perf-bread type design:
  The resistor with the long-ish leg above board waves at and invited DMM leads for testing/debugging, made as a large value to be later trimmed with...a resistor piggybacked right to it...a quick loop/twist/solder makes the other end easy to get connected/disconnected, or use a pot here.
  So the resistors have leads which can easily be found/ID'd, making it easy to find test points, add extra parts without cramping traces underneath where all the tight-copper near copper mess has been alleviated by...
  Above board components, logically placed so that excessive leverage doesn't pull copper pads loose. For a stronger above board lead I will use more than one copper pad as a 'column base'...but ''the arch'' technique really puts some accessible copper above board [such as for connecting all the ground wires to.
  Everything must be done below the surface [not]...gets all crampy and too touchy touchin' down there...above board is where I prefer to be once the physical structure of componentry is adequately...structured to an ample copper pad[s base.
  Anyway this helps me get a finished, tweeked board out of the time, or a circuit that goes in the 'pile-heap' of junk...trade off there...if there's anything good to be wrung out of 'it', perf-bread is the quickest way I've found to make a tweeked, boxable, semi-permanent [reliable/tweekeasy-able later] circuit.
  I like to get 'it' in a box, that way I can put it through paces in real situations.

[deadastronaut]

just to butt in on this subject....

i;m getting my head round breadboarding and schematics.......(slowly)

do most guys use a sheilded wire input/output on ya breadboard...? to stop noise/ radio/interference etc...

and what common pots would you have setup on it?...considering there is a lot of variation of pot requirements
on every project...

rob.

[DougH]

You need to learn to look at a circuit as a collection of junctions. These points are where components are joined, and translate exactly from the schematic. Don't worry about positioning the components like they look on a schematic. Concentrate on the connections between the components instead. A methodical way of doing this is to number all the junctions on a schematic, then make a list of them. Next to each item, list the components that are connected to this point. You can also number the "nodes" or connection points of each component. For example- a resistor has two nodes, so you might represent those for "R1" as "R1-1" and "R1-2". Then for example, junction 10 might look like,
"10: R1-1, C3-2" or something. Then you recreate this "net list" on the breadboard, position components and use jumper wires as needed to accommodate the connections. Although, it takes a little time to write it down, it's an easy way to keep it straight as you are starting out. Eventually when your brain starts thinking this way, you may be able to wire up the breadboard directly from the schematic.

[Hides-His-Eyes]

just to butt in on this subject....

i;m getting my head round breadboarding and schematics.......(slowly)

do most guys use a sheilded wire input/output on ya breadboard...? to stop noise/ radio/interference etc...

and what common pots would you have setup on it?...considering there is a lot of variation of pot requirements
on every project...

rob.

On a breadboard, the entire thing is going to be EXTREMELY noisy as every single 'node' is going to have a nice little arial of 1" of copper wire (that's how the breadboard connects the components)

So just don't bother.

As for pots: when breadboarding I prefer to use Preset potentiometers that slot right in and you turn with a screwdriver; I keep 1k 10k 100k and 500k and use whatever's closest.

[deadastronaut]

just to butt in on this subject....

i;m getting my head round breadboarding and schematics.......(slowly)

do most guys use a sheilded wire input/output on ya breadboard...? to stop noise/ radio/interference etc...

and what common pots would you have setup on it?...considering there is a lot of variation of pot requirements
on every project...

rob.

On a breadboard, the entire thing is going to be EXTREMELY noisy as every single 'node' is going to have a nice little arial of 1" of copper wire (that's how the breadboard connects the components)

So just don't bother.

As for pots: when breadboarding I prefer to use Preset potentiometers that slot right in and you turn with a screwdriver; I keep 1k 10k 100k and 500k and use whatever's closest.

aha..presets..yeah i got a load of them.. that makes sense...

so how do i know for sure that my bboard project isnt gona hum n buzz when it finally ends up boxed!...

i suppose i dont!..lol.

[liquids]

You need to learn to look at a circuit as a collection of junctions. These points are where components are joined, and translate exactly from the schematic. Don't worry about positioning the components like they look on a schematic. Concentrate on the connections between the components instead. [...] Eventually when your brain starts thinking this way, you may be able to wire up the breadboard directly from the schematic.

Great post, doug.    It's key to see a schematic as a figurative document, a theoretical one.  It's easy when it can be translated as a physical picture of a layout, but that, in the long run, is hindering.   You have a great explanation of how to go beyond that.  I love breadboarding!!!   

1) First things first. beep out your breadboard with your multimeter first so you know where all the connections are first, and not by assumption.  Some commonly available breadboards are not consistent with others in regard to the rails in particular.  Trust me, I learned this the hard way.  I've mentioned a few times on here before.  It will only take a few minutes, you'll learn something as you go, and you may spare yourself a lot of frustration if you do this first.

2) Steve at Smallbear has a good bread boarding how-to step by step picture tutorial for a fuzz face.

3) Beavis Audio (dano) has great breadboarding layouts (but no step by step tutorial) to get fired up on more complex circuits on the breadboards.  Pick something simple.

Lastly, you may be a pro with big complex circuits and perf/vero.  But if you've never breadboarded, start at the beginning.  Do a simple one from dano's site, and get it working. Then, try something 'simple' without a picture tutorial, like bread boarding the beginner project here from scratch.  Breadboard a few things successfully and you will be richly rewarded for a lifetime of prototyping and risk-free mods/experimenting....

[MikeH]

Not sure if anyone has mentioned this or not but, I say get the biggest damn breadboard you can find.  A lot of people run into problems breadboarding because everything ends up too cramped together; things touch, components are hard to move, it's difficult to see connections, things come unplugged and its difficult to notice... etc etc etc.

I like to lay out my breadboard circuits just like the schematic for maximum visibility/recognition.  And a big breadboard makes that possible.  Big ones aren't that much more expensive and if you buy a big one, chances are good it's the last one you'll buy.  Unlike me.  I went through 2 others before I bit the bullet and bought a mammoth.

[Brymus]

just to butt in on this subject....

i;m getting my head round breadboarding and schematics.......(slowly)

do most guys use a sheilded wire input/output on ya breadboard...? to stop noise/ radio/interference etc...

and what common pots would you have setup on it?...considering there is a lot of variation of pot requirements
on every project...

rob.

I keep a drawer of pre -wired pots with 3 conductors.
This way I just stick what ever value I need in any of a number of holes drilled for them along the edge of my breadboard.
Belowe that is a row of holes for switches and belowe that are some for 1/4 jacks.
I have this on each end of my breadboard "station" with 3 breadboards mounted in the middle

[jimmybjj]

  A booster in a box...somehow have one, perhaps a perf-bread type design:
  The resistor with the long-ish leg above board waves at and invited DMM leads for testing/debugging, made as a large value to be later trimmed with...a resistor piggybacked right to it...a quick loop/twist/solder makes the other end easy to get connected/disconnected, or use a pot here.
  So the resistors have leads which can easily be found/ID'd, making it easy to find test points, add extra parts without cramping traces underneath where all the tight-copper near copper mess has been alleviated by...
  Above board components, logically placed so that excessive leverage doesn't pull copper pads loose. For a stronger above board lead I will use more than one copper pad as a 'column base'...but ''the arch'' technique really puts some accessible copper above board [such as for connecting all the ground wires to.
  Everything must be done below the surface [not]...gets all crampy and too touchy touchin' down there...above board is where I prefer to be once the physical structure of componentry is adequately...structured to an ample copper pad[s base.
  Anyway this helps me get a finished, tweeked board out of the time, or a circuit that goes in the 'pile-heap' of junk...trade off there...if there's anything good to be wrung out of 'it', perf-bread is the quickest way I've found to make a tweeked, boxable, semi-permanent [reliable/tweekeasy-able later] circuit.
  I like to get 'it' in a box, that way I can put it through paces in real situations.

I don't understand you. Your syntax is very confusing, at least to me. I'm not really sure if your saying anything at all.

You need to learn to look at a circuit as a collection of junctions. These points are where components are joined, and translate exactly from the schematic. Don't worry about positioning the components like they look on a schematic. Concentrate on the connections between the components instead. A methodical way of doing this is to number all the junctions on a schematic, then make a list of them. Next to each item, list the components that are connected to this point. You can also number the "nodes" or connection points of each component. For example- a resistor has two nodes, so you might represent those for "R1" as "R1-1" and "R1-2". Then for example, junction 10 might look like,
"10: R1-1, C3-2" or something. Then you recreate this "net list" on the breadboard, position components and use jumper wires as needed to accommodate the connections. Although, it takes a little time to write it down, it's an easy way to keep it straight as you are starting out. Eventually when your brain starts thinking this way, you may be able to wire up the breadboard directly from the schematic.

thanks, i will take this approach.

Not sure if anyone has mentioned this or not but, I say get the biggest damn breadboard you can find.  A lot of people run into problems breadboarding because everything ends up too cramped together; things touch, components are hard to move, it's difficult to see connections, things come unplugged and its difficult to notice... etc etc etc.

I like to lay out my breadboard circuits just like the schematic for maximum visibility/recognition.  And a big breadboard makes that possible.  Big ones aren't that much more expensive and if you buy a big one, chances are good it's the last one you'll buy.  Unlike me.  I went through 2 others before I bit the bullet and bought a mammoth.

Do you have any recommendations? They all seem to be about the same.

just to butt in on this subject....

i;m getting my head round breadboarding and schematics.......(slowly)

do most guys use a sheilded wire input/output on ya breadboard...? to stop noise/ radio/interference etc...

and what common pots would you have setup on it?...considering there is a lot of variation of pot requirements
on every project...

rob.

I keep a drawer of pre -wired pots with 3 conductors.
This way I just stick what ever value I need in any of a number of holes drilled for them along the edge of my breadboard.
Belowe that is a row of holes for switches and belowe that are some for 1/4 jacks.
I have this on each end of my breadboard "station" with 3 breadboards mounted in the middle

These options sound very interesting, do you have any pictures?

[liquids]

I'm not sure where you order but...

http://mouser.com/ProductDetail/Twin-Industries/TW-E40-1020/?qs=sGAEpiMZZMvJBlHRSOGUxOhvehuk8u4q%252buErI77hhAk%3d

http://circuitspecialists.com/prod.itml/icOid/6885

http://www.jameco.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product_10001_10001_20723_-1

http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail&name=438-1045-ND

All these are basically the same.  I like these the best-the rails being color coded seems minor, but it makes a difference.  II also find it's easy to do voltage readings on them. They seem to last forever.  I've got about 6 of them right now, some of them were given to me used...never an issue with a dead spot yet.

More importantly, you can link many of this kind of breadboard together to make a huge breadboard suggested, or, keep them separate.  You might want a jumper kit to get you started breadboarding, but making your own jumpers from solid wire of various color-coded wire (22awg preferable, 24awg will do) is a good thing long term, for debugging purposes at the breadboard...and the jumper wires in kits do eventually fall apart in one way or another, while the one's I've made myself haven't had that issue. But hey, one thing at a time I suppose.   

[petemoore]

  I'm not really sure if your saying anything at all.
 Don't get stuck thinking that copper pads are the only places connections should be made, move above-board by creating new pads there, simply by raising the resistor body.
 The copper pads are to be used for providing 'adequate' structure.
 At some points, they become 'piled on' and these situations I find difficult to work with.
 I use the top of the board...for about <1/2 of the circuit, there is less crowding of conductive surfaces, I found the insulative surfaces above board much easier to work-re-work, especially as the bottom of the board gets crowded.
 As techniques for making 'pads' above board by simply elevating a resistor began to be developed and utilized, the realization that starting with 'the large value' [use = to or >the schematic value] allows easy reduction of any resistor value...just 'piggyback' a parallel pot or resistor.
 This has made many a reliable/quickly built "Perf-Bread" boards. They are very easy to 'read' [find test-probe points etc.] and access, also much easier to work with, test, debug and modify, they just seem more resistant to failure for me, YMMV> try spreading things out a little bit and use the top of the board, it begs for it by providing useful insulative surfaces where new pads can be created.
  To utilize the method:
  Analyze the circuit with the intent of placing some of the nodes/connections above board.
  Make adequate physical structure. Use the copper pads [perhaps even sewing loops here and there, through 2 pads, creating a twist of double-lead-column strength above board].
  Study which parts can be made easily modifiable [resistors are cheap] by multiplication. For resistors, parallel values get smaller, series values add, two seriesed resistors with a 'wire switch' [remove one end of wire jumpering across the 'mod' resistor].
  ...anyway, all kinds of 'twists' and mods can be made on an otherwise solid, reliable board which fascilitates testing/debugging/less crowding/easier modification by utilizing more of the more 'heavily insulated' areas above board in creative ways.
  Especially useful for quickly twisting up a circuit that is with high probability of becoming an enclosed/finalized circuit in a rig, but a few things here and there will want to be tweeked with...if 'that' resistor is buried...makes it very hard to tweek it.
  Allows smaller boards, lower chance of trace-shorts, easier to find and access nodes.   
  Also helps with alleviation of the hard to re-work pile of leads at 1 copper-pad-node, concealed and protected by closely adjacent copper leads that 'grow' below the board.

[MikeH]

Not sure if anyone has mentioned this or not but, I say get the biggest damn breadboard you can find.  A lot of people run into problems breadboarding because everything ends up too cramped together; things touch, components are hard to move, it's difficult to see connections, things come unplugged and its difficult to notice... etc etc etc.

I like to lay out my breadboard circuits just like the schematic for maximum visibility/recognition.  And a big breadboard makes that possible.  Big ones aren't that much more expensive and if you buy a big one, chances are good it's the last one you'll buy.  Unlike me.  I went through 2 others before I bit the bullet and bought a mammoth.

Do you have any recommendations? They all seem to be about the same.

Something like the one at the bottom of this page:  http://www.a1parts.com/breadboards/bread_boards.htm

[liquids]

Not THAT's a big breadboard!  ("that's what she said")   

[WangoFett]

I got a half-arsed prototype box I made.  It is a largish plastic box with input and output jacks, bypass switch and indicator LED and volume knob.  The input and output wires feed out from the box into a bread-board that is stuck to the top.
This is sturdy enough to take into the band practice room and send a whole lot of ambient noise through my amp.

I usually start plugging components in at semi-random.  When I run out of space I run a few leads to extension bread-boards.  It usually doesn't work as expected and that is often due to dodgy pins on the bread-board not making contact.  But I don't throw the board out like I should, I just try to work around the problem areas and cause myself unnecessary grief.

When perfing, I now meticulously draw and redraw the layout on graph paper until it becomes a work of art, then I arrange the parts on the perf-board until I find I am short a particular valued capacitor.  Then get side-tracked by another project idea or whatever is on telly.

[DougH]

 The copper pads are to be used for providing 'adequate' structure.

Perf boards with copper pads seem redundant to me. I've tried them but am not sure why they are really there or of what use they are- unless you like building traces with little pieces of lead trim and then trimming the leads on all the components (and pretending you are using a PCB). That's too much screwing around for me. Raw naked perf is so easy and fast to wire up with existing component leads and works great. I don't build boards to "rework later". These are just one-offs for my own amusement. If I was in production I'd have someone build PCB's for me and I'd go that route. I don't build stuff unless I know I want it in the first place. And I'm pretty careful about wiring correctly. I'd say I have a 99.9% success rate or thereabouts.

[petemoore]

 Here's my final exam result observations:
What's best to use depends on what you want.
  I think I'll swap method and try some more copperless perfboard.