A few people asked about this. I’ve seen breadboards with binding posts before, but usually they’re nothing special, just some banana plugs near the board that you can screw a jumper wire into. I wanted something a little more full featured, so I whipped this up.
It’s 3 interlocking cheap $5 breadboards, linked together, that have had the sticky backing peeled off and that have been stuck to a clipboard. There are 8 banana terminals/binding posts mounted on the clip which are hardwired to the power rails of each individual board by a configureable jumper block. The advantage is that it keeps power management easy and clean, and any spare power rails can be used as easy interconnects to a meter(s) so that you don’t have to have extra leads coming in. Basically, any off-board connections that can be made by banana plug can be moved away from the prototyping area, which means things stay more organized and there’s less opportunity for heavy wires to yank out of the design by accident.
Also, mounting everything on a big clipboard means there’s leftover room, in which I added (fake) laminated white paper as a whiteboard area. This way, notes can be made and labels added to clearly indicate current configuration.
Here’s a quick video walkthrough:
Custom Breadboard from Alex Whittemore on Vimeo.
[…] UPDATE: People keep asking about the breadboard setup. Fair enough. I'll throw together a quick overview when I get home today. UPDATE: here it is: http://www.alexwhittemore.com/?p=462 […]
Nice work! Quite creative. I need something like this. I always have little bits of wire attached to my probes crisscrossing my breadboards, not to mention having long power leads pull out and get tangled on things. This is a great DIY solution!