Cleaning up my prototyping setup - pics

[Retroplayer]

I was getting tired of wires hanging all over the place, so I have started to clean up my prototyping system. I took a medium sized cheapo cutting board and place the adhesive solderless breadboards to it arranged around my Arduino Mega2560 so I am close to all the pins. I used a variety of sizes of the breadboards.

I also stripped off one of the buss strips of one of the longer boards since it didn't make sense to have two right next to each other. I affixed that along one edge so that I could transfer power all along the board. I have a compact little 12V/5V/3.3V/ADJ 3A power supply module coming from china here soon. That will replace the breadboard mounted supply when it gets here.

Also left to do is to cut one of the mid-sized boards down the middle and mount half to the sides (top and bottom) for stuff like pullup resistors, SIP modules, switches, etc... Basically stuff that only ever needs half a breadboard anyway. I will keep a power rail on it as well.

I am also considering wiring up the power rails underneath the breadboards for an even neater look. If I do that, I will then take another power rail and snip the the metal rails into 10 pin sections and route those to the separate boards. Then I can chose what power goes where. Finally, another trick I do to keep things clean is to trim resistors and such that are used for pullups and tuck them underneath modules. I also have these shorting jumpers (I need to remember where I got them because I need some more) that you can see all over the board. I also tuck those underneath modules for power jumpering, etc.. I have some small ones that are just right for bridging from breadboard and power strip and some really long ones. I usually rebend the longer ones for longer jumps such as when pins on the same part are connected together.

Anyway, thought you guys might get a kick out of it.

[Retroplayer]

If anyone else has any suggestions or tips and tricks, I'd appreciate them. I didn't mention the little board in the one corner. It works nicely for stuff like the SD card, LCD displays, etc... I may cut that one in half as well. It's kind of wasted on stuff that only uses half anyway.

BTW, the cutting board is nice because it has a handle for carrying the whole thing around if needed. I actually have some of those portable DVD rechargeable battery backs that I picked up on major clearance. I might have to incorporate that into here somehow. Also some sort of storage for my headers and jumpers would be nice.

[Retroplayer]

Made a couple more adjustments. I cut the smaller board in half, mounted some cable clips on the board for managing wires, and put some rubber feet underneath it. You can also see the energizer rechargeable battery pack in the picture. It appears to run the board while also trickle charging the battery. The battery is 9.6V, no markings on capacity, though. It was meant for powering portable DVD players, so it should be decent.

I am trying to think up a good way to have removable modules that I can plop on the board. I am thinking about taking those little boards and mounting magnets underneath them and getting some adheseive backed metal and mounting that on my board. It would be nice to have various modules that I can pop in and out easily when they are needed (Stuff like an LCD screen for example.)

Also modified some 2mm to 2.54mm adapters. These are very useful when hacking stuff since everything seems to have 2mm connectors now. I ordered some 3.3v regulators to mod my arduino's. Its a pain to have to use a level translator for everything! I realize that I may have to change the fuses to drop it to 8MHz, but supposedly these can be overclocked a bit, right? It's either going to be that or I am going to have to put together (or buy) some level translator modules. Hopefully something that won't eat up a bunch of breadboard space (Hmm, maybe I can come up with something that just bridges over my arduino to the breadboard and snaps right in?)

[tytower]

My first suggestion is you reduce the size of your pictures  to 800X 600
Then save them at 30%
Then it will not be so huge as to make some people not bother.
You can always supply a more detailed picture if asked for.

[Retroplayer]

Or.... and this is just a suggestion: You could simply click off a post that you are not interested in or somehow annoys you without leaving a comment.

I am not selling you anything, or asking for money, I don't have a degree in marketing, and frankly I couldn't really care less whether your crappy monitor is incapable of displaying my pictures without annoying you. You have a choice. Use it. This isn't walmart where you get to go and complain about your service. If you wish to pay me for my posts, then we can talk.

In case you are usnsure how this forum works, my pictures are displayed as little thumbnails for you to look at until you click on them. So, they are tiny and if you want to see more detail, then you click on them. If you don't then you don't.

It's called sharing. I won't lose an ounce of sleep if you simply ignore my posts because you don't like how I sized my pictures. Nope. Not an ounce. If someone gains something from what I post, great. If not, that's great too

I will honestly never understand the mentality of people that go into a forum and just make off-topic, negative comments or complain about another persons posts. Is your life really that miserable? If you don't like it, don't read it. Just move on.

Good day to you.

[tytower]

Umm You seem to be misunderstanding or refusing to see the point .
That is -
You waste resources doing it that way on the server which is badly overloaded already.Slowing every serve down.
Download time is valuable to most people and in poorer countries and rural areas they don't have the download capacity of the big cities and it takes forever to get a picture down . In the bad old days you could drink a beer in the time it took to get down one picture.
Personally I'm on a boat and it costs to get your picture down
You cant see much from a thumbnail-look at how many views of the first are made then compare to 2 and 3.

I have a personal dislike of criticising posts too. Mine is a suggestion concerning the attachments.
Your post seems pretty pointless though anyway!

[Retroplayer]

Umm You seem to be misunderstanding or refusing to see the point .
That is -
You waste resources doing it that way on the server which is badly overloaded already.Slowing every serve down.
Download time is valuable to most people and in poorer countries and rural areas they don't have the download capacity of the big cities and it takes forever to get a picture down . In the bad old days you could drink a beer in the time it took to get down one picture.
Personally I'm on a boat and it costs to get your picture down
You cant see much from a thumbnail-look at how many views of the first are made then compare to 2 and 3.

I have a personal dislike of criticising posts too. Mine is a suggestion concerning the attachments.
Your post seems pretty pointless though anyway!

ok. Thank you. Have a nice day now.