Homemade Wooden Arduino Tray

I've been inspired to make an arduino tray similar to the plastic on on instructables...

... but I didn't have any plastic available, and I also wanted it to hold the battery and breadboard so...

Here's the arduino tray I just finished today.
Imgur
Imgur

I started out with a wide board of pine, and made two rectangles of 8" x 7 5/8".
I measured my large breadboard and arduino/battery pack combo to get ideas for space sizes.
I ended up with a larger rectangle of 6 1/2" x 2 1/4" for my breadboard, 4" x 3 1/2" for the arduino and battery pack, and a 3" x 1 1/4" space for extra parts, which I cut out freehand with the scrollsaw (probably would have been straighter with a bandsaw).
I routered the edges all the way around, and the internal edges of the parts compartment with a 1/4 roundover w/bearing, and stained with a medium stain, which I am really happy with. I predrilled and countersunk the holes and screwed it together, covering the screwheads with four protective pads to keep it from scratching countertops. A few 3/8" risers under the breadboard bring it up to slightly above level with the top. I'm very happy with the overall look and use of it! Hope this inspires someone else to create something similar!
~Alex

Very nice, I'm guessing you won't be mass producing :slight_smile:


Rob

Nice work!
I'm doing one to with some mosfets wired up to scrap aluminium base as heatsink.

Very nice. I hate the breadboard and Arduino just wandering around on the bench too. :slight_smile: Far too easy to knock a wire loose, and a real pain when I have to move it out of the way.

I used a few bits of scrap ply and chip board for what I have at the moment. Eventually, I'll make a nice presentable holder like yours, perhaps with a few other bits and bobs..

I hate the breadboard and Arduino just wandering around on the bench too.

Yes, also it can't be good for the board. Having everything available and in the same place every time is really productive .. especially since I'm not to tidy.

I found myself always needing more breadboard room, so I took a simpler route. 3 830 point breadboards, which came with double sided tape on the back, acrylic clipboard, and a duemelanove with a pair of 4-40 screws & nuts.
Clipboard ws $2 at local surplus store, and the clip comes in handy for holding long wires

karlboll:
Yes, also it can't be good for the board. Having everything available and in the same place every time is really productive .. especially since I'm not to tidy.

Snap. I would send a picture of my living room/computer workstation/electronics area, but my camera refuses to entertain the idea.

@CrossRoads
Good idea. Simple and efficent.
I was thinking of peeling off the backing on the boards that have it, but I came across a flaw in that plan. Once they get stuck they don't get unstuck easily.

My first, soon to be soldered up and boxed project spans three breadboards right now. They are propped up on my scanner, and waiting for me to work out the enclosure and soldering plan. In the meantime, I am still pottering around with various other things, so a set of removable boards is a good thing. A couple of bits of double sided tape,and they are stuck well enough to work with, but not so tight that I can't lever them off.

My idea is something like in the attached picture. A board to mount everything on, and a drawer or two for parts and jumpers and the like. A variable power supply working through a wall wart would also be cool, and pretty easy to do in the space available. Perhaps even a switched 3.5/5/variable one.

CrossRoads, I'm stealing your idea.

Great idea crossroads. I really like alexhb's wooden board, very neat for keeping things in their place.

I tend to use meccano for cobbling bits together but the holes are never in the right place.

Glad I could come up with a good suggestion :slight_smile:

When I was working on my RF transmit/receive, I had 2 loose breadboads floating around loose on my laptop keyboard, I had to type around them as I was fixing code. Got the clipboard after, had had enough of wires falling out & stuff, or whole board just sliding right off the side into the floor, loose wires everywhere.
Have a whole very large tupperware container full of bags of parts (headers, nuts/bolts, tools, etc) so a drawer wouldn't really work for me, just have too much stuff.

Just to totally derail the thread, what RF stuff did you use?

The Sparkfun 434MHz modules.
MO-RX3400, WRL-08950 RX
MO-SAWR, WRL-08946 TX

I have 8MHz Promini running on 3.7VLiPo for TX, with velleman keypad and MAX1811 battery charger.
Goes into Sleep mode after keypress, Diode AND into pin2 for interrupt to wake up & read next keypress.
Receiver is standard 5V 16MHz Promini.
Works great using Virtualwire.

For those who lack Alex' woodworking skills and/or tools, you at least don't have to envy the functionality (we need a green smiley), because there's .... Leguino :smiley:

I found that the complete assemblies still moved around sometimes, so I wound up attaching one of the baseplates to a chunk of wood to add some more weight. If you don't have lots of baseplates to spare, and want to preserve them for regular Lego-building use, sacrifice four 1x4 plates: drill out the stud at one end, put the undrilled studs on the baseplate, and you can screw the assembly to the wood through the sacrificial plates.

XD

Wow! Just .. Wow! :grin: