circuit prototyping

 Circuit Prototyping Boards

There are a few ways to prototype your circuit designs. We’ll cover solderless breadboards, perfboard, and manufactured PCBs. Each one has its own set of pros and cons.

Solderless breadboards:

Pros: one-time expense, quick and easy to build and modify circuit designs.
Cons: Contacts eventually weaken, not permanent, hard to do with surface mount (SMT) parts.

Perfboard:

Pros: not expensive, sort of permanent, easy to modify circuit design, SMT boards are available.
Cons: more time consuming, need to solder.

Manufactured PCB:

Pros: Professional look and feel, through-hole and SMT available, multiple layers available.
Cons: manufacturing time usually takes at least a week, harder to modify circuit design, most expensive.
As a side note on making PCBs, you can also buy kits and etch your own boards. If you go this route, you’ll have to work with harsh chemicals. This can be messy, smelly, and dangerous. The good thing is you get your boards quickly and can always etch another if you make a mistake.

Draw a Part Layout Before Starting

Soldering components to a perfboard or making a PCB only to find that all the parts don’t have enough room to fit properly is a real bummer.
To avoid this, draw a part layout before you get started to be sure everything fits. If you use a PCB layout program, you can create layouts, print them, and use them as a template for perfboard prototyping.

 Different Colours for Different Wires

Use different colours for making group connections like a data bus or a power bus. For example, make the data bus wires all yellow and the power wires all blue. This will help you keep track of your connections.
And if you need to go back to the circuit design later to troubleshoot or modify it this will make your life a lot easier.

 Use IC Sockets

Use sockets for all your integrated circuits. Start out with all sockets unpopulated so you can test for proper voltage on all points of the circuit. This can help prevent you from blowing out any parts if you’ve made a mistake, like swapping power and ground.
Once everything is checked and good to go, pop the ICs into the sockets.

 

 Perfboad Layout and Circuit Design

When using perfboard that has not been made for a specific enclosure (some are), spend time cutting it and fitting it to whatever enclosure you pick. If not, you run the risk of later finding a component mounted in such a way that it blocks the hole you needed to put there.