It was almost 25 years ago since I last built a circuit on a perfboard or stripboard and forgot most of what I learned.
Now, I've designed a new circuit, but I'm overwhelmed by the sheer wiring that I need to do. How do I start? Am I supposed to use jumpers for the wiring inside the red boxes? I was planning to use perfboard.
Since you are starting with a Devboard as a central component, The best approach would be to get some female-header-pins and solder those onto the perfboard (aka experiment PCB) in the appropriate spot so the devboard fits onto it neatly.
Then get some thin solid wire with isolation in various colors and use that to connect to other components, which you may also consider to connect using female headers (or solder straight onto the perfboard.)
Thank you. I was planning to do that but I was concerned about the solid wires that will be crisscrossing one another. Is that standard practice? Or is there a better way?
Planning , start by drawing the component pins on paper and use strait wires to connect pins.
If the wires cross to much swap the component 180 deg.
Leave a few open tracks between components and use that to transfer wires.
I like solderable magnetic wire for this type of work, its easier to solder off the enamel exactly where you need it rather than fighting with the insulation jacket, especially with very small wires.
the counter argument of course is color coding the power wires from signal wires, etc.
Yes, your picture explains it very vividly. Thanks a lot!
Use strip board.
This program is great.
Wire-wrapping is still a good standby for complicated boards.
The old Tefzel wire is horribly expensive now, but Kynar is affordable.
You can literally go from point to point. It was good enough for early computer boards and I believe some commercial IBM boards were sold wire-wrapped.
Wiring pencils are an alternative.
I think that such complex circuits are very difficult to assemble on a breadboard, it is easier to first draw and order the PCB, and then solder the parts
Your schematic layout may contribute to this general apprehension. There's not a lot there - it's all in the presentation.
Start with a logical placement of the modules. You appear to have two modules on the bottom end of the ESP32 which use pins mainly from the upper side. It looks like you are using in the order of only 11 GPIO pins so there is great scope for tidying the whole thing up.
Just tried this program, it's awesome! But I can't seem to find an option to see the bottom of the perfboard so that I can hook up jumper wires.
That alone rather suggests you would do well to consider giving all that stuff the flick and go straight to designing your own PCBs. They just make life so much easier.
I have not used it a lot and not sure if you can flip the board but you can change the transparency of the board so that you can see parts that are on the bottom.
I too have skipped all that stuff and go straight to a PCB , more reliable and easier to fault find
With the likes of JLCPCB it’s not expensive .
Even if your new PCB has errors it can be easier to add the odd wire or cut a track .
PCB software allows you check tracks go to the correct place
Just had offer of 5 boards 100x50 £3.10 delivered
And donate any spares to the local Scout Troop.....
Obligatory XKCD
