ELECTRONICS 101: BREADBOARD © 2 0 0 8 - 2 0 1 8 M I C H A E L E T T E R S H A N K

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ELECTRONICS 101: USING PROTOTYPING BREADBOARDS TO BUILD ELECTRONIC CIRCUITS

Prototyping breadboards come in various sizes, but they are all basically a plastic rectangular shape, with lots of

holes arranged in rows and columns like the image below. Electronics engineers use breadboards to build circuits, to

test sensors, to add new functionality and features to a robot and countless other uses.

The breadboard is a solderless system, which is useful because you can connect electronic parts without making

permanent soldered joints which means the parts can be re-used again and again.

A MINI PROTOTYPING BREADBOARD [the right-hand illustration shows the underside connections]

Notice, from the image above, there are rows from left to right and columns which are vertical. When you plug parts

into the holes in the same row, they connect because there is a metal strip behind the holes that the wires slot into

when you stick the parts into the breadboard.

On the breadboard the rows on the left are NOT connected to the rows on the right, because there is a gap in the

middle which is indicated by the channel that runs from top to bottom in the middle between the horizontal rows. The

reason for the gap in the middle is that’s where you place microchips or integrated circuits, so the gap is there to

prevent the pins on the right from connecting to the pins on the left which would be a short circuit.

In the illustration, the two resistors towards the top connect to each other because there is a jumper wire between the

row on the left and the row on the right. The two resistors on the left of the breadboard are connected because the

bottom lead from the top resistor is in the same row as the top lead of the bottom resistor. The two resistors on the

right side of the breadboard are not connected – look carefully and notice their leads are plugged into different rows

which is a common mistake folks make … when not paying close attention to where the parts are placed exactly.

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TRY BUILDING this LIGHT SENSITIVE CIRCUIT on a BREADBOARD

The circuit diagram [below] for the image above does not look exactly the same as the actual circuit, but you probably

can understand both better if you look carefully at both drawings:

GOOGLE SEARCH FOR OUR VIDEO ON YOUTUBE THAT SHOWS YOU HOW: