I noticed one user had included a really nice breadboard diagram in a forum posting. When I asked how it was done I was pointed to http://fritzing.org/. I can see Fritzing is mentioned in quite a few posts, but I have not found a link or reference to it on the Arduino.cc website. Maybe I have just missed it?
Looking at posts I can see a number of people trying to describe circuits with hand drawn sketches or photographs, or even just in words. I think the quality of the forum would be improved if more people were aware of Fritzing. My suggestion is simply that the website makes reference to Fritzing and perhaps recommends its use. I have no connection with Fritzing other than recently becoming a user.
Most of us Engineers here can't stand fritzing. Having a pictoral layout of unnamed parts is no help in debugging.
Much more useful is an actual schematic of what is connected.
For that purpose I prefer a shematic capture program such as expresspcb.com, great way to draw a quick simple schematic for discussion or to build from without the steep learning curve of something like eagle.
As a newbie I found the breadboard mode good for laying out my very simple circuits.
I did not find the schematic mode difficult to use and it gave me a method of describing my problems to others.
Its free, I was using it in minutes and it was giving me information about components that was new to me.
I cannot compare Fritzing with other products but it does seem to me quite a few people on this site are not using anything and it is definitely better than that. Perhaps I should change my suggestion to just reference a free, easy to use, breadboard/schematic/pcb tool that already has Arduino boards as components - in that case what would the site reference?
I personally like the schematic capture tool at expresspcb.com for making quick diagrams for discussion here.
I also use it to create my layouts when I'm prepping a wirewrap card, and then update with any changes (like when I missed my planned placement by a row because I can't count late at night it seems!)
My first design that I built here was also layed out in expresspcb.
Couple of examples.
First is the LED displays we wirewrapped for the big scoring machine I've posted before - seeing what would fit on 80x100mm CCA - which is the size of velleman ecs1/2 boards and also the eagle-light limit for boards.
Next is the control board that has a promini to run things.
Later versions had standalone 328 with caps/crystal in that spot (ran out of prominis).
Might do a pcb version of that eventually, if I ever find time to add the score-touch mechanism for foil & sabre. Only does Epee now.
