Show your bread board

[dimlow]

I would like to see what others are doing right now. So i thought a show your bread board topic would be nice. To get us started i have included my current bread board setup. An IEEE 488 / GPIB / HPIB to USB adapter.

I was not very impressed with the prices of these adapters so i thought i would start building my own. Don't know if it will ever get finished, but its keeping me busy for now. it uses a PIC 18f4550 and simple pull-ups and lots of spaghetti.

[dimlow]

Ok, as nobody has posted, here is my sons fan controller project for his level 3 extended diploma in Engineering

[steve30]

Here's my current breadboard.

Its a variable voltage/current PSU which is going to be retrofitted into the 'DATATEXT' PSU box. Voltage is controlled by the Bourns 10 turn pot and the current is controlled by a regular 4k7 pot.

Hope to get it build on a PCB soon, but I still need to tweak the circuit a bit first.

[steve30]

This is my other breadboard which has been sat in a box for a few years and hence the circuit has pretty much fallen apart.

It is a Transistor Radio, using a Germanium diode, and two Germanium transistors (OC71 and OC81).

Station is selected by changing the tap on the coil. Unfortunately the whole thing seems to not work at all when any form of tuning cap is attached. The volume is adjusted by the slider pot.

I'll have to get it built up again sometime.

[dimlow]

Here's my current breadboard.

Its a variable voltage/current PSU which is going to be retrofitted into the 'DATATEXT' PSU box. Voltage is controlled by the Bourns 10 turn pot and the current is controlled by a regular 4k7 pot.

Hope to get it build on a PCB soon, but I still need to tweak the circuit a bit first.

I like the component basket in the background.

Its a neat idea to take a fixed power supply and build voltage and current control to it.

My breadboard is now empty, ready for the next project. My other son transferred my breadboard to perfboard.

[steve30]

What's the fan controller for? (i.e. is it for any specific application?)

The basket in the background of my photo is actually a pen pot, but it will take pretty much anything; arduinos, screwdrivers, wire strippers, solder pumps etc.

The PSU circuit was supposed to just be a really simple one to quickly retrofit into the box, but it ended up being more of a trial run for the more advanced supply I am trying to design. I guess if I perfect this one, then the other, more powerful one will be quite easy to design.

[dimlow]

The fan controller is a simplified design of one i did many years ago for my PC. The fan controller i made controlled 8 fans and could have up to 8 temperature sensors, had an LCD for displaying fan speeds and set points and would adjust each fan speed according to a temperature sensor. It used PWM for the fans and PID for control. Unfortunately it could only drive fans of up to 300mA.

My sons project ( as he is only just learning to program) does not have PWM or PID. its just a simple on off control based on the temp,and can only control one fan. But on the plus side he is using a high power darlington transistor capable of 8 Amps, 60V or 70Watts total (as i was given a bag of TIP130's) so could be used to control any fan or in fact any temperature controlled load of up 70 Watts.

Becasue I have a bunch of them i may may even try to make a pic controlled dummy load with the TIP130's, not sure if its suitable, but its worth a try.

My GPIB controller has now progressed to this.. As you can see its on the Logic analyser, i can't get it to talk to my scope!

Come on guys (girls) reading this, post your breadboard images.

[iloveelectronics]

I will post my bread board once I have this new lab/office/warehouse space set up (hopefully within the next few days). I have not touched it for months and it has literally been collecting A LOT of dust since I started this eBay business! It's an interface between an Arduino Nano and an electronic dartboard. My plan was to custom program a dartboard system much like a commercial electronic dartboard machine with those fancy animations and sound effects, and to allow custom scoring modes. It communicates with a PC via a bluetooth module.

[blankfield]

Old good TTL 74xx

[dimlow]

Interesting board, Now days, I think that lot could get done in a couple of lines of MCU code.

[dimlow]

I will post my bread board once I have this new lab/office/warehouse space set up (hopefully within the next few days). I have not touched it for months and it has literally been collecting A LOT of dust since I started this eBay business! It's an interface between an Arduino Nano and an electronic dartboard. My plan was to custom program a dartboard system much like a commercial electronic dartboard machine with those fancy animations and sound effects, and to allow custom scoring modes. It communicates with a PC via a bluetooth module.

Yes Franky, if you look at my board you can see it also collects lots of dust at times. I go through periods of in activity with electronics. Usually this is in the summer here. When the sun comes out , we all go out into sun. Interesting project, how do you sense the darts ?

[iloveelectronics]

Yes Franky, if you look at my board you can see it also collects lots of dust at times. I go through periods of in activity with electronics. Usually this is in the summer here. When the sun comes out , we all go out into sun. Interesting project, how do you sense the darts ?

The dartboard has 2 conductive films with a bunch of contacts on them and when a dart hits a certain segment, 2 contacts on the 2 films would be "shorted". It's basically a 12 x 7 matrix which I needed to map to the 82 segments on the dartboard. I have actually already sorted all that out and the PC can already tell which segment is getting hit but I just never had the time to actually make a proper PCB and finish the software part (which will be quite a task). This is the video that helped me a lot with the basics (as I was a complete newbie): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeDOti4FBq0

[blankfield]

Interesting board, Now days, I think that lot could get done in a couple of lines of MCU code.

Sure but it is lot of fun to wire and run this kind of "monster" . It's good exercise for checking and controlling of complex electronic system.

[dimlow]

The dartboard has 2 conductive films with a bunch of contacts on them and when a dart hits a certain segment, 2 contacts on the 2 films would be "shorted". It's basically a 12 x 7 matrix which I needed to map to the 82 segments on the dartboard. I have actually already sorted all that out and the PC can already tell which segment is getting hit but I just never had the time to actually make a proper PCB and finish the software part (which will be quite a task). This is the video that helped me a lot with the basics (as I was a complete newbie): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeDOti4FBq0

So how does that work when two darts go into the same section on the board ?

[iloveelectronics]

So how does that work when two darts go into the same section on the board ?

You won't be throwing 2 darts at once (or even in succession too quickly). The program would "black out" the detection for about half a second after every dart hit, to avoid mechanical bounces etc.