Actions
Forum Thread Details
  • Replies 7 replies
  • Subscribers 59 subscribers
  • Views 720 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Related

Breadboard Plates

djfraz

So after buying myself the Adafruit Arduino plate this week, I fell in love. It is a very simple concept; being one piece of acrylic with holes for mounting your uno and a space for a half sized breadboard.

One of the best things for me was the fact that my uno would no longer roll around due to the USB cable, which has been bugging me with most of my development boards. Since as far as I have found adafruit only makes them for the Uno and Raspberry Pi B/B+, and I haven't seen any others on the web. I decided to design some of my own. Just now I have completed one for an Intel Edison Arduino Board and a Beaglebone Black. This is one of the first times I have used Adobe Illustrator to design a vector drawing, I am happy with managing to get these two completed. From printing out paper copies, all of the mounting holes line up and everything looks to be ok.image

 

So I thought I would share them with the community and see what you think. I haven't been able to export them to DWG or DXF file format as my version of Illustrator keeps crashing when I try, so I have just attached the .ai files.

I am hoping to make a couple of these when I can get some (cheap) acrylic, and since I am not lucky enough to own a cnc mill or lazer cutter I will be making it manualy; although if any of you have access to one I would like to see your results if you want to try making them.

Attachments:
https://community.element14.com/cfs-file/__key/communityserver-discussions-components-files/88/BBB-Plate.ai
https://community.element14.com/cfs-file/__key/communityserver-discussions-components-files/88/Intel-Edison-Arduino-Plate.ai

  • Hi Duncan,

     

    This is a good tip. I too am often frustrated the way the USB cord torques the Arduino around. Thanks for the post.

     

    John

  • Very nice.

    I often thought about it and decided against it.

     

    Are you still doing your light blasting of plastic?

    Is this something you could assist Duncan with even though he's in that other bit attached to your island.

     

     

    Mark

  • Mounting plates are great, but there are a huge number of low-cost USB modules out there and adding plates for all of them gets to be expensive.

    One thing I recently discovered is some of the flat USB cables are very flexible, and put a lot less torque on small modules.

    It might be useful to make up an un-dedicated base plate with a a USB cable clamp that only leaves an inch of cable to the module. This should basically hold any attached module in place.

  • in reply to mcb1

    I did a universal one years ago  Shabaz had one or two I think ..

    It can take a RPI,Arduino Frescale and about 10 other boards as well as a few FPGA boards and a large full size breadboard.

     

    It was stackable and all sorts !!

     

    Give us a shout if you are interested !

    Thanks for the shout Mark

  • I didn't consider making a universal plate as I was only wanting to make them for my collection of dev boards, although now that you have put the idea into my head I may look into designing one.

     

    My initial thoughts would be to make it modular, a breadboard plate which can connect to various plates designed for boards. Mainly due to the fact that from my looking, the breadboard is the most expensive piece as I can pick up an A3 size sheet of acrylic for around £3 online.

  • in reply to dougw

    I did it with a space for a cable tie which is similar to what you  are taling about I think. Cable tie the USB cable then do what ever.

    The only thing I can think of is that it would tend to slosh about a bit so maybe with a couple of tie points it would be OK

  • Welcome to the world of making.

     

    There are a lot of ways to make useful testing equipment.

     

    The key to learning is to see a problem and solve it with what you have.

     

    That is the first mark of a good engineer.

     

    DAB