Breadboards and Jumpers

The box every circuit starts from before anybody solders it. A solderless breadboard holds parts by their legs, jumpers connect them, and in ten minutes you have what would otherwise take an evening.

There are boards in several sizes: small 170-point ones for a single module, medium, and full-size with two power rails along the edges.

Flexible jumpers or rigid wire

• Flexible coloured jumpers are quick and convenient, and you can see where things go. On a board with fifty connections, though, they turn into a bird's nest you cannot find a mistake in.
• Rigid wire cut to length lies flat along the board. It takes longer to build, but the circuit stays readable and does not fall apart when you move the board.

For a three-part circuit, use flexible. For something that will live a week and be debugged, use rigid.

What a breadboard cannot do

• High frequencies. Rows of contacts are capacitors and inductors. Anything faster than a few megahertz behaves differently on a breadboard than on a PCB.
• Large currents. The contacts are good for about an amp. Power stages are not built on breadboards.
• Reliable contact. A loose socket is the most common cause of “it worked and then it stopped”. If something behaves oddly, wiggle the wires first.

Do not put a board with stretched sockets back among the good ones: set it aside and tell us.

How to use

1. Take a board to suit the circuit, and jumpers.
2. Run power along the rails at the edges, not with a jumper across the whole board.
3. When you take it apart, remove every part and jumper and return the board empty.
4. Sort the jumpers back into their box by type rather than tipping them into a heap.

Components for the circuit are in the component boxes and on the component kit shelf.

Access

The container is in the hackspace room, so a plan that includes hackspace access is required. No induction is needed.