Nuts and Volts - May 2014

From Breadboards to Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs)

Typically, most people are introduced to the breadboard during their first tutorial in electronics and use it to build their first electrical circuit. The components have long leads that are easy to insert into the breadboard and are called through hole (TH) or dual in-line package (DIP) components. For a time, pretty much every electrical component that was sold could be used with a breadboard for a temporary setup or soldered together using a perforated circuit board for a permanent solution.

You could buy the latest technology in a TH or DIP configuration and use it in your project. However, as technologies advanced and demand for more compact designs increased, parts were made smaller and the TH and DIP configurations were dropped, leaving the part only available in a surface-mount (SM) configuration (Figure 1).

Surface-mount components have been a great advance and allow devices to be built smaller and smaller. The only drawback is that you have to use an adapter board while prototyping with a breadboard. This isn’t a major problem with many companies already selling SM sensors or components in a breadboard-friendly format, with the

Electronics is a wonderful adventure. At first, everything is covered with arcane symbols, but then you begin to decipher the symbols and crack the code. You blink your first LED. You continue gaining skills and advancing.