Breadboard Workshop PDFs

Technology
Breadboard Workshop PDFs

MAKE contributor Blake Maloof was one of the workshop teachers.

Here I am showing a young fairgoer how to build the blinky circuit.

This year at World Maker Faire, we put together a Breadboarding Workshop to act as a companion to our popular Learn to Solder activity. For a test run, it was a great success. We taught over 80 people how to use a breadboard and to build a fun blinky light circuit on the board. Many of the participants were children.

We had cartoonist Jody Culkin create a comic that explains breadboarding and two that detailed our circuit build. Several people just bought the parts bundle or weren’t able to finish their circuit at the event. For you all, below are the PDFs from the workshop. If you want to do the workshop at home, we were using the guts from our Mintronics Survival Pack Guts which are available in the Maker Shed.

What is Breadboarding? [PDF]
Build a Blinky Circuit! [PDF]
Blinky Circuit Top View [PDF]

Special thanks to Jody for the art (and being a workshop teacher) and to Sean Ragan for the circuit and a lot of the workshop organizing (and tireless teaching).

18 thoughts on “Breadboard Workshop PDFs

  1. kosamari (@kosamari) says:

    Nice Documents!
    What would be the license of these PDFs?
    My dad runs Breadboarding Workshop in Tokyo, and I would love to translate this to Japanese for class…

  2. Découverte de l’utilisation des breadboards | Actu-Radioamateur Découverte de l’utilisation des breadboards | L'actualité radioamateur, et nouvelle technologie… says:

    […] Retrouvez la série de PDF, et l’article original sur le blog de MAKE […]

  3. Confused? says:

    Wonder what Mr. Mimms was thinking with the transistor output?! Using the NPN to short the LED seems like he wants to kill the battery quickly (read; very inefficient – and unnecessary).

    Drive the LED directly (with a limiting resistor, of course) as the 555 can sink or source up to 200mA.

    1. Sean Ragan says:

      Yup! That’s change #1 for the next workshop.

  4. Comics on Make site Now | Jody Culkin says:

    […] If you would like to download my comics from the breadboarding workshop at Maker Faire, they are now on the Make site. One page explains how to use a breadboard, 2 pages explain how to build the circuit they used in the workshop. http://blog.makezine.com/2012/10/03/breadboard-workshop-pdfs/ […]

  5. Reidh says:

    Again? its really not necessary to teach little kids how to solder, when Chinese girls can solder circles around us all. And between wire winding and plug together components, bread boarding can be done by 5 yr olds. Teach them component circuitry or order of operation in circuit, and electronic theory. don’t bother with something that nanobots are going to be doing by the time those kids grow up.

    1. Gary Stager, Ph.D. (@garystager) says:

      What you say may be true, but the only experience more magical for kids than soldering is developing black and white film.

  6. Marc Edwards says:

    Dear Gareth,

    We will be doing workshops on the Arduino and we really like your worksheets. Please could you let us know what software you used so that we could make similar ones for our workshops?

    Thanks,

    Marc Edwards, Bangor, Wales, UK

    1. Jaymes Dec says:

      Marc,

      The artist who made the comics is Jody Culkin. I think she uses Illustrator to do her comics! But you could try Comic Life. Good luck! And please share your results! I do a lot of Arduino workshops too.

      Jaymes Dec

  7. Learn to breadboard electronics – the blinky light edition | Singapore Mini Maker Faire says:

    […] shared that the idea came about while he was reading the MAKE blog article and he felt that this simple and fun workshop could be run at our local Mini Maker Faire to get […]

  8. 45_grave says:

    breadboards rule

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  14. 5 Breadboarding Quick Tips | Make: says:

    […] all of the components are called, was put together by the wonderful Jody Culkin. It was used for a breadboarding workshop that we’ve run at Maker […]

  15. some spiffy breadboarding tips … – JRE's Web Site says:

    […] an excellent resource to share with the lab students. This and other resources were used in their breadboarding workshops at Maker […]

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Gareth Branwyn is a freelance writer and the former Editorial Director of Maker Media. He is the author or editor of over a dozen books on technology, DIY, and geek culture. He is currently a contributor to Boing Boing, Wink Books, and Wink Fun. His free weekly-ish maker tips newsletter can be found at garstipsandtools.com.

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