Electronics - Stage one soldered

I figure it's time to take a photo and post it if it looks slightly different to how it did before.

It doesn't actually work, but you don't know that, so you may maintain a suitable expression of impressed-ness, and congratulation.

It still needs the adjustment equipment, and then needs to be cut so it isn't so long. The plan is to fit it into the PVC tube it's sitting in, but I want to wait until everything is on the board before I trim it to size. I could probably cut it now, because I have left all that space at the top right for all the adjustable things.

Adjustments to things like numbers of feeds per day will be made with "Pots" or potentiometers. A potentiometer is a thing like a volume knob except mine will be adjusted using a screwdriver so you cant accidentally change them. 

Currently, my board looks like this.

I doesn't look like much, but it's still challenging me.

It's a dot to dot.

I made it work on the breadboard.

There are the same number of holes on the stripboard.

Just copy it over.


Except I thought I should change a few things.

Oh well.

Because this is my first project, what I should have done is made a replica of the breadboard by cutting tracks to the same layout. It would have wasted a few holes in the stripboard, but I wouldn't have had to change anything.

The other side looks like this.

Soldering on stripboard is a totally different beast as compared to a circuit board, or even the board with just coppered holes on it.

Because the strips are long and large, they act as a heat sink and suck all the temperature out of your soldering iron.

The solder also flows along the length of the strips rather than forming a nice dot around the pin you are working on.

No doubt I'll get better with practice.

Or not, who knows.


120 things in 20 years - not quite Electronics - Stage one soldered

Electronics - Breadboard

My breadboard layout looks like spaghetti.

So I put together on some software called Pebble. It runs in a web page, and is free. Just google search for "pebble breadboard" and you will find where you can download it to your system, or find a place that it runs live online.

It does this...

And it looks a lot less like spaghetti.

You can load various different boards, like breadboards, and pre made picaxe boards.

Pictured here is some stripboard.

Stripboard just has strips of copper running from top to bottom that act as conductors, and is full of holes.

The holes are evenly spaced and standard, so enable you to fit things like chips etc.

You add components to the non copper side, and solder them by flipping the board over. (bend the pins a little after putting the components through so they down fall out when you flip the board

You add wires and components, and can cut the copper strips where needed with a hand held drill bit twisted a few time. Cuts are pictured here with a red X.

The big advantage over pen and paper is it allows you to drag components around to make things fit better.