Request for a MakeBread v3

@ ransomhall - I have a request for a slightly different variation on your MakeBread module. While playing with various sensors and one-off things lately, I’ve been thinking it would be nice to have something like pictured below. The idea is that I can take something such as a temperature probe that’s on a wire and permanently mount it to an Extender/MakeBread and make it a permanent one-off module. The slim shape would allow me to solder on a cable and then wrap the whole thing in shrink tube so that only the socket is exposed. I’ll order the first ten kits (PCB + socket) at $3/kit. Whatcha think?

Geez, had you done that image in Eagle you could send it off to the fab today ! :wink:

Not a bad idea.

Good idea Ian! I’d be down for 10 or so as well!

If I’d attempted to do that in Eagle I would have ended up getting zero sleep last night… Me & Eagle are still trying to become friends. I don’t want to be in the module business, so I thought I’d help out those that do :wink:

Consider it done. The price sounds doable for quantities of 5 or more. I like the shrink wrap idea. What, may I ask, are you guys going to do with all these?

How about this? Positions of the 0.1" header pins match their position on the gadgeteer header.

Suggestions all relate to vias…

Try not to overlap the via keep-outs, you might find they’re not within tolerance of a fab. The ones at the edge (eg near P7/P5) might be a problem too, and I’d try to move the 5v via away from the header; as per my earlier MakeBread comment, with such small areas to work in, the solder will wick over the solder mask because of the small tolerances and bridge pins. It’d be different if it was going to be reflowed commercially but I don’t expect that to be the case here.

Edit: I think you changed the post (not the image) while I was typing; suggestions still as above, but perhaps you can simply soldermask over the vias as well to protect them?

@ brett - Actually already tweaked this to account for your original suggestions about vias. Had to go refresh my memory :slight_smile:

It will end up being a hair wider to give everything the room it deserves.

Looks almost exactly like what I had in mind. I was hoping the height of the board wouldn’t be but just a hair wider than the height of the socket pads so that a smaller shrink tube could be used. This should still work just fine though if that’s as tight is it can be.

My immediate need is to tack one of these to the end of a DS18B20 temp probe cable. I don’t have an immediate need for ten but I imagine there will be other similar needs in the future when I need to just hook one or two components to a board and call it a module.

I didn’t spend a ton of time routing the traces, and there is always room for improvement. I like my traces a bit wider than they probably need to be. Anything smaller on the pin labeling and it’s hard to make out. This combined with the via placement makes it tricky to get anything skinnier. I can send you the files if you want to give it a go.

Actually, I think it’s a little thinner than I was thinking at first glance. The blue outline will be the edge of the board, right? I was initially looking at the whole pic as the board. This shuold be fine. Let’s give it a go!

Yep. Don’t let the picture fool ya. This will be one small module. I’ll keep you posted on fab progress offline.

Since I’m not a H/W guy, what are the circles on the boards? I’m not referring to the socket and the corresponding holes - but for example above and between P7 & P5.

Are these the “via keep-outs” that Brett referred to?

Thanks

Yes.

What the purpose of these? (Again I’m very much an electronics n00b!)

Easier to connect non-gadgeteer electronics to a gadgeteer mainboard

Ooops i accidentally deleted my post…

If you look closely you will notice how some traces cross each other so they use VIA to give access to the underside of the board to run those traces to where they need to go kind of like an under bridge…

I’m sure it can be explained better…

Gotcha - so they are just the point at which the traces transition from “top” to the “bottom”.

I assumed that they would all be on the “top” of the board, and Ps and others would be holes (like on the extender). But now that I think about it, these are going to be pins for use with bread boards, so there wouldn’t be holes all the way through board at all.

Makes sense now. Thanks to village for raising this n00b :slight_smile:

Speaking of bread boards, is there a good link explaining how they work? I get the concept of the device, but am not sure of the details.

@ mhectorgato -

Take apart a bread board and you’ll see how it works… just some metal connecting the rows together. I think that’s why you’ll hear a few people say something like “connect it to the power rail”… the conductive piece actually looks like a rail (as in railroad).

Early on I had the same question - what are all those little holes for. They also secondarily serve as decent little test points (gurus might shudder at the thought :slight_smile: ) I admittedly cooked a decent Delorme bluetooth GPS thinking that’s what they were… tried to reverse engineer the board with a multimeter. Hah!

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here is an imagine of the web:

and the description:
A solderless breadboard. The yellow lines on the image on the right show how the sockets are connected. You can see that the vertical columns of holes labeled with a “+” are connected to each other, as are the columns of holes labeled with a “-.” The columns labeled with a “+” are called the power bus, and you will connect one of them to a positive input voltage, such as the positive terminal of a 9-V battery. One of the columns labeled with a “-” (the ground bus) will be attached to the negative terminal of the battery. Note that in each row (numbered 1 through 30) sockets “a” to “e” are connected to each other. And “f” to “j” are also connected to each other. These groups of connected sockets form a node.

and the original link: