Prototyping items of interest

[Karl W4KRL]

Here are some products I have found useful for Arduino prototyping. They
would work with any µP system:

 

·         Color coding is a nice way to identify interface ports. Only a
very few vendors have male headers in any color other than black. eBay
vendor MDflystore sells a collection of white, black, yellow, blue, and cyan
header for a rock bottom price with delivery from the US:
http://stores.ebay.com/MDflystore?_trksid=p2047675.l2563

My shipment came in three days. They also have a website with very
interesting hardware and µP products: www.mdfly.com

 

·         In prototyping the tendency is to power everything from the USB
port but we all know this usually has a 500mA current limit, not counting
all the mice, keyboards and Wi-Fi adapters already hooked to it. Find out
what is really being drawn with a “USB Charger Doctor” sold by a number of
eBay vendors at dirt cheap prices. I bought two to tear one apart. It has a
pass through USB connector and alternately displays voltage and current. My
iPhone 4S spiked at 780mA before settling down. It pulled the USB port
voltage down to 4.67V. Mine was delivered in 9 days from a US drop point.

 

·         You can’t have too many jumpers. You need a selection of
male-to-male, male-to-female, and female-to-female Dupont jumpers. I like to
buy them as ribbon cable then pull them apart as needed for multi-conductor
cables. A bit of carefully applied hot-melt glue on the side of the
connectors bonds them together very effectively. Learn from my experience:
Do not use instant glue! 

 

·         My workbench is littered with commercial protoshields of every
description and none of them is satisfactory as they all have DIP and SMT
pads in places that don’t suit and eat up area. Making your own is
problematic but can be done. One simple solution is to use ordinary
prototyping board and simply do not put in a header for digital lines
D8-D13, that way you avoid the oddball Arduino pin spacing. The Radio Shack
276-168 works well for this. If you need the use the upper digital pins
there is a way that is poorly explained and deceptively illustrated at:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Embarassingly-Easy-Arduino-ProtoShield/

It took me a few failed attempts until I discovered that it is
embarrassingly easy but tedious. If you try this method explain to me how
you solder the headers onto the “right side” of the board. I gave up and
built several stripboard shields upside down: ugly! I punted by buying a
batch of double-sided “doughnut” style proto boards that are on a slow boat
from China.

 

·         Finally, a product that looks interesting but I have not tried: a
no-solder SOP8 to DIP adapter:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/SOIC8-SOP8-to-DIP8-EZ-Programmer-Adapter-Socket-Conv
erter-Module-With-150mil-/400329108910?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0
<http://www.ebay.com/itm/SOIC8-SOP8-to-DIP8-EZ-Programmer-Adapter-Socket-Con
verter-Module-With-150mil-/400329108910?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5d357
96dae> &hash=item5d35796dae

It looks like you can temporarily snap in an SMT for prototyping and then
remove it for the final application.

 

Happy Memorial Day,

73 Karl W4KRL

 

 

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