RF CIRCUITS

TSC Department
UPC

Evolutionary
Breadboard
A Portable Electronics Lab

A portable electronics lab is presented.It is built around an EVOLUTIONARY PROTOBOARD powered from a computer
USB port.This protoboard is mounted over a plastic plane wich facilitates the setup of experimental circuits

EVOLUTIONARY BREADBOARD:
A Mobile and Portable Electronic Laboratory
Jos M. Miguel
RF ELECTRONICS LAB
TSC-UPC CAMPUS NORD
BARCELONA SPAIN

jmiguel@tsc.upc.edu
Abstract: A portable electronics lab is presented.It is built around an evolutionary protoboard powered from a computer
USB port.The protoboard is mounted over a ground plane which facilitates the setup of experiments

Keywords: Portable lab,Electronics lab,Protoboard,Virtual instrumentation

1.Introduction
There`s growing momentum and interest in increasing the
number of students focused on science and information
technology.This kind of students along with radio and electronics amateurs need hands-on circuitry labs.A conventionally equipped electronic lab is costly and sometimes
only can be used during school hour or session.It is well
known that the real amateur needs his lab available 24 hours
a day.
In this paper,we present a different approach with what we
called a Portable lab a complete electronics lab that`s
low cost,minimalist and flexible.It consists of a Evolutionary breadboard ,a tester and a laptop or a PC which
provides 5V DC power supply from its USB ports and
virtual instruments like function generators or frequency
meters that run around the sound card of the laptop.
With this lab every student or electronics amateur gets his
setup and tackes individual projects.

Figure 1. Classical breadboard [1]

A classical breadboard it is shown in figure 1.It consists

of a metallic plate,some binding posts and the most important, a solderless plastic unit that it is bonded to the plate
by using some screws.The solderless has sets of holes into
which wires can be inserted.Inside each hole,invisible to
you,is a metallic socket appropriate for snugly receiving a
wire pushed into the hole.
Sets of sockets,arranged in rows and columns,are connected together internally as it is shown in figure 2.

2. The classical breadboard

Solderless breadboard are great units for making temporary circuits and prototyping.Another common use is testing out new parts such as Integrated Circuits
(ICs).Electronic engineers and others scientific people love
breadboards because ease carry out the proof of concept.In
this way they can verify that some circuit idea has the
potential to being used in their designs.

Figure 2.Electrical connections in rows and columns of a solderless boar

You plug the wire leads of the components into the

holes to connect them to one another without soldering

Jos M. Miguel

them.The metal plate is painted and therefore the binding

posts are electrically isolated.They are used to connect the
benchtop power supply from two banana cables as it is
shown in Figure 2.Another option is just plug the wires
from a barrel jack or from a 9V battery holder as it is
shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. A breadboard being powered trough the binding posts from

banana cable [1]

breadboard with better usability than the classical one.In

fact,it can be considered as a portable electronic laboratory
when it is used in conjunction with a multimeter and PC
sound card based virtual instruments.

The new breadboard as it is shown in figure 4. Uses a

PCB as a support plate and incorporates a USB socket that
pulls 5V DC from your computers USB port or from an
USB wall charger like the shown in figure 6..Alternatively
you can use the barrel jack or the two female banana connectors to DC supply yours circuits with 9 or 12 volts
The metal side of the PCB plays an important role in the
operation mode of this protoboard.It is
used as
ground.The -5V negative terminal of the USB socket,the
sleeves of the female BNC connectors,the black binding
post, the metal case of the audio jacks and the negative
terminal of the external DC power jack are all of them soldered to that ground plane

Figure 4.The jack is soldered to two wires that shares the same holes on
the binding pots as the wires going to the power rails of the breadboard[1]

3. The evolutionary breadboard

Figure 6. USB wall charger

One of the botton rails of the solderless board is also connected to ground.Finally the two top rails of the solderless
board are connected to +5V and +external DC respectively.This arrangement gives a lot of easy access to power and
ground in the prototyping space.
The red and black binding pots located at the top right
cornet are used to connect the test leads of a voltmeter.The
red pot is rear connected to a litle black post which is glued
to the solderless board.You can insert a wire in that post
and measure any voltage in the circuit as it is shown in
figure 7.

Figure 5.The evolutionary breadboard

In this section we are going to present an evolutionary

Figure 9.A FFT based spectrum analyzer

Figure 7. How to measure a voltage using a tester

The assembled circuit is a LED and a series current-limiting resistor connected from +5v to ground.It is
important to quote that you don`t need an extra wire connecting the black banana plug to the ground of the circui.That is the function carried out by the rear ground plane
of this evolutionary breadboard.

There are two audio jacks in the breadboard.One of

them that can be used to pull a voltage from the headphone
output of the sound card to the circuit that you are testing.The other audio jack is used to establish connection
from the breadboard to the line input of the sound
card.Standart PC multimedia audio facilities offer much
under-utilised potential for scientific and amateur projects.In Ref`[2] W.A.Steer presents a ready- to- run sound
card- based software frequency-counter, a realtime spectrum analyser and a sinewave signal generator,all for use at
frequencies up to 20KHz.(See figures 8,9 and10)

That voltage can be produced by means a software that

Figure 10.A sound card based generator

It is not advisable to use oscilloscopes based on the

sound card because they have its inputs ac coupled.So any
DC component of the voltage input can`t be displayed.
If you need to test your circuit with an oscilloscope,an
interesting option is the Educational PC Oscilloscope Kit
from Velleman [3].It costs less than 40,has a bandwidth
from DC to 200KHz and an input range from 100mV to
5V/Div.It needs a USB port and runs under Windows.In
figure 11 you can see this equipment that also works as
transient recorder and spectrum analyzer.

Figure 8. A sound card based frequency meter

Jos M. Miguel

Figure 11.Educational PC Oscilloscope Kit from Velleman

Model EDU09

If you need a better oscilloscope,Picotech [4] has a great

variety.One of the Picoscope 2000 series can be an excellent option.The evolutionary breadboard has two BNC
sockets to push the signals to the Picoscope inputs as you
can see in figure 12.

Figure 13.Testing a breadboarded circuit with BasicDSP [5]

4.The Portable Lab

The portable lab provides all you need to set up electronic circuits.It can be used anywhere and only needs a PC
or laptop with USB connection.
The list of items required consists of:
1-An evolutionary protoboard (see figure 5)
2-A multimeter
3-A little box with compartments for store electronics
devices,resistors,capacitors,ICs,wire jumpers etc.
4-A case for storing tools
5-A case for storing cables (Banana-Banana,Audio)
6-A USB wall charger if you work without PC
7-An oscilloscope like Vellemam EDU09 (Kit)
The complete portable lab it is shown in figure 14.

Figure 12. The Portable Lab with a PicoScope 2204 and the virtual signal
generator Generatosaur

Figure14. The complete portable lab

The portable lab can be carried easily inside a briefcase

or iven better inside a cool shoulder bag or a backpack.

Figure 15. The portable lab in a shoulder bag

REFERENCES
[1] How to use a breadboard.
Tutorial Sparkfunk
[2] Sound Card Audio Tools
W.A. Steer
[3] Velleman EDU09
Educational PC oscilloscope
[4] Pico Technology
[5] BasicDSP
[6] COPYBIT

Jos M. Miguel