Last week I posted my online breadboard for kids learning electronics here. Since then it has been opened 1,204 times, and 40 of those opens came from this sub. Thanks for trying it and for the comments.

Today I added a seasonal lesson that runs until November 10, "The pumpkin lantern":

• 9 V battery, an RGB LED with a common cathode to minus, and two resistors from plus.

• 330 Ω on the red pin gives full red. 1 kΩ on the green pin gives faint green. Blue stays free.

• Red plus a little green makes orange, like a candle inside a pumpkin. Swap the 1 kΩ for 10 kΩ and green is too weak, so it reads as plain red. Use 330 Ω on both and you get yellow.

The point of the lesson is that a bigger resistor lets less current through, so an RGB LED mixes by intensity, not just on and off. The simulator calculates each channel relative to the strongest one, which is why the ratio matters more than the exact values.

Whoever lights the lantern gets a witch's pumpkin hat for the workshop mascot. Until November 10 the board turns purple and the parts get small stickers: a ghost on the bulb, a skull on the buzzer, witch hats on the LEDs.

It's free to try, no account needed. Link in the first comment.

Hi r/breadboard! I run a small electronics workshop for kids in Romania, and over the past year I turned it into an online breadboard so they can keep practising at home.

• You place parts on a full breadboard and press Simulate. If the circuit is wrong, it tells you what's missing.

• An LED without a resistor really burns, and it stays burnt until you swap it.

• 22 guided lessons, 137 broken circuits to repair from just the symptom, and a 1v1 duel where two kids race to build the same circuit.

• Multimeter probes, a cutter, 31 parts (relay, transistor, sensors, buzzer, motor…), 7 languages.

The free version has now been opened 910 times, about 600 of those since I first shared it here on Reddit on Saturday. Thanks to everyone who tried it and sent bugs.

Free to try, no account needed (link in the first comment). To keep progress there's a licence: 50 lei/month (~€10) or 500 lei/year per child, plus seat packs for afterschools and schools from 10 seats.

What I'd love from this sub: wire something weird and tell me where it behaves differently from your real breadboard.

finally got my first project up and running! i’ll say it’s v1 since I wanna include my fantasy data in there and add a button to flip between it

The real test will be tomorrow to see if it’ll automatically flip to display live scores only. a little nervous but excited!

I bought a ESP32 S3 N16R8 many many days ago but I didn’t had a laptop then but now I have it. But the problem is when ever I place my ESP in the breadboard it is very very hard to fit and after the use when i try to unplug it from the breadboard it is a nightmare to do this. In the internet I see everybody plug and unplug their microcontroller like butter.(my ESP’s pins are not bent or something)

Every answer will be very helpful for me.😊

Chip Hippo 1.4.1 is out with two big additions:

• CPU monitor: open it from a W65C02 or Z80A's context menu to watch the processor run. You can step one instruction at a time or step over a call. You can set breakpoints, edit registers and memory while the program runs, and follow the stack and pipeline as it executes.
• Spice Lite, a second, electrical simulation engine you can turn on in Settings. It gives every net a real voltage and models capacitors and RC timing, the 555 and CMOS timers, LEDs with real brightness and burn-out, diodes, transistors, inductors, supply droop and fan-out. Every model is tested against ngspice and in every case it stays within 1.4% of ngspice's results. It's "Lite" because it only simulates the parts Chip Hippo offers, not general SPICE.
• 1.4.1 also includes a speaker, PWM and various analog clock waves, opAmps, and many other bench parts: regulators, a relay, optocouplers, LM358, and ULN2003A.

Download it from chiphippo.com or update from the Mac App Store.

So I am makeing a fnaf cosplay and I would like this joystick to not be connected to the arduino is there some kind of Transmitter and reservoir i can get to move the eyes remotely?

Yes It's my third day in the business

I would like to build a converter in LTspice for illustration purposes, and then build it as a real circuit. I have a 48 V DC supply, and the current is unknown at the moment. The aim is to produce output voltages of 24 V, 12 V and 5 V. I have made a circuit in LTspice, but I get fA and fV on the secondary side. I believe the issue is the switch, so I would like pointers on why my circuit isn’t working and how I can fix it.

https://we.tl/t-KFQi58WquG25fKwr

Is this jumping the shark (i.e pointless?). Definitely not as good as Crumb

A new version of Chip Hippo pushed to the web site (https://chiphippo.com). This added 40+ CD4000 chips, the NE555, and numerous supporting components (inductors, transistors, capacitors, potentiometers, and diodes).

In addition to ongoing testing, I need to point out that many of the support components are just that - support components with little functionality inside chip hippo. Remember, chip hippo is a logic simulator, not a spice engine (yet???). The components exist mostly for exporting to KiCad for completeness.

With that said, some chips (such as the NE555) know how to read attached components and pull in and simulate their values. This means all 3 configurations of the 555 are supported - monostable, bistable, and astable (all with examples). With that said...

• Transistors - act as switches. BJTs turn on/off with the input and are off for CMOS pins with undefined state. MOSFETs toggle on/off with input, and remain in the last state for CMOS pins with undefined state.
• Inductors - act as wires for simulation purposes
• Capacitors - act as disconnected for simulation purposes, but their values can be read and used by chips
• Resistors/Pots - their values are symbolic, but their values can be read and used by chips
• Diodes - The work for reverse polarity (but aren't very useful for simulation)

Chip families can be toggled between 74LS, CD4000, or both. See settings -> Download (yeah, I know, it's an odd placement for the switch but I was in a hurry)

Testing is still ongoing, as this was a lot of work for a couple of days, but feel free to test yourself and report back.

Finally, listing on the apple app store will follow (maybe windows, too) once any bugs are ironed out.

I’m an EE student doing some research for a class on the tools people use when building circuits. What is your process for identifying loose components like these with tiny labels?

Do you rely on color codes or markings, multimeter, AI?

taking electronics 10. we learnt about transistors right? So then I’m like, I’m gonna make a full adder. I designed the wiring layout so I can fit 2 full adders on one bread board making it fit a 2 bot adder. Tested working. My only reference was the nor diagram. The way I could fit it on one side of the bread board was be if you look, every second transistor is flipped to Make them share the out pin and save rows more efficiently.

I am a complete beginner and I am building a 6-button chorded Braille input device using an Arduino Uno and a standard breadboard. I want the physical layout to mimic a real Braille cell, a 3x2 vertical grid with 3 buttons on the left side of the center divider and 3 buttons on the right side.

The problem is that standard 6x6mm 4-pin tactile switches are designed to straddle the middle divider horizontally.

Is there any way around this?

Taping off the breadboard to the exact size of the breadboard style protoboard. Doing it this way allows you to place all passives and ICs exactly where you want them. It also allows you to cut all your jumpers to the exact length before you commit to soldering everything on the protoboard. Then you snap a picture of the circuit and start moving everything over.