Ordering Information (Updated Feb., 2012): Minimum order is now $10 (not including shipping costs); maximum order is $100.
Orders below $10 or above $100 will be automatically refunded.
International shipping is available. Shipments to the United States, Canada, or Mexico are trackable and insured.
Shipments to all other countries are not trackable, and are also not insured.
Instructions for Installing a 400-Point Breadboard on the ProtoFlex Shield
The following instructions detail the process of installing a 400-point breadboard on the ProtoFlex Shield. Some of the steps that I took may seem like a bit of “overkill,” so feel free to modify my procedures. This is how I did it:
Step 1: Install two 6-pin and two 8-pin male headers that mate with your shield base. The easiest way to do this is to insert the long ends of each of the four headers into the corresponding female headers on your shield base. On the PICAXE shield base, there are two duplicate headers in the upper right-hand corner (pins C.0 through C.5). Make sure you insert the 8-pin male header into the 8-pin female header that’s closer to the edge of the shield base so that the pins line up correctly. Next, place the ProtoFlex on top of the short ends of the male headers so that the pins protrude through holes as shown in the photo below, and solder them in place.
 |
| Location of Male Header Pins on ProtoFlex |
Step 2: Because we are going to mount the breadboard on top of the male-pin headers, it’s important to minimize the length of the protruding short ends of the pins. I wanted to protect the header labels from getting scratched during this step, so I covered them with painter’s tape as shown below. (I wasn’t worried about scratching the middle of the ProtoFlex because the breadboard will cover that area.) With the tape in place, I snipped the pin-heads as close to the board as possible, and then rubbed the cut ends on a piece of emery paper taped to a flat surface. Once that was done, I slowly peeled the painter’s tape from the ProtoFlex.
 |
| Prepared for Sanding |
Step 3: I think that the double-sided tape on the back of a breadboard is electrically non-conductive, but just in case that’s not correct, I decided to remove the foam backing from the breadboard in the area of the male pin-heads. The following photo shows how much foam tape I removed. (In the photo, just ignore the small PC board in the center. I had to place it there in order to get my camera to auto-focus correctly.)
 |
| Portions of Double-Sided Tape Removed |
Step 4: Since I had exposed one of the power or ground rails on each edge of the board, I decided to cover that area with black electrical tape. (See the following photo.) I am probably being over-cautious in this step, but that’s what I did!
 |
| Electrical Tape Covering Exposed Rails |
The next photo just shows that I ended up with a little clearance between the sanded pinheads and the exposed power rails – so far, so good!
 |
| Close-up of Gap Between Pins and Rails |
Step 5: At this point, a sad little story is in order. A while back, I was working on a project that involved sticking a breadboard onto a stripboard circuit. I peeled the protective paper from the back of the breadboard and placed it on the stripboard, only to realize that it was crooked and looked terrible! I then tried to remove the breadboard in order to reposition it, and discovered that you can’t do that without destroying the foam backing – half of it stayed on the breadboard, and half of it ended up on the stripboard.
I didn’t want to repeat the same mistake again, so I decided to make a little jig that would ensure that everything lined up correctly. I inserted the long ends of four 19-pin male headers into two pieces of breadboard. Then I placed a piece of stripboard (traces up) on the headers, and soldered the short ends of the pins to the stripboard, as shown in the following photo. The stripboard is 2.4 inches wide, which results in the two outer columns of headers be spaced the same as the two columns of female headers on a PICAXE or Arduino shield base. The two inner columns of pins are spaced so that there’s only one way to insert the pins into the main (300-pin section) of a 400-point breadboard.
 |
| Breadboard-Alignment Jig |
Step 6: When I finished the jig, I test-fitted it on my ProtoFlex board as shown below. (The female headers are not yet soldered to the PC board, and the paper backing is still on the bottom of the breadboard.) When I was sure everything lined up correctly, I flipped the assembly over, and soldered the female headers to the ProtoFlex.
 |
| Jig with Breadboard and Female Headers |
Step 7: At this point, there were still two more female headers that needed to be soldered to the ProtoFlex, so I re-positioned the jig as shown in the next photo, added the remaining two female headers, re-assembled things again, flipped the assembly over, and soldered the remaining female header pins to the bottom of the ProtoFlex.
 |
| Jig with Additional Female Headers |
Step 8: All that remained to do was to stick the breadboard in place. I was probably being over-cautious again, but I was determined to do it right on the first (and only) try, so covered the extra female sockets (the ones into which I did not want to insert the jig’s male headers) with small pieces of painter’s tape. Finally, I removed the paper backing from the breadboard, and carefully re-inserted the jig back into the same holes they had previously occupied. The finished result is shown below. As you can see, this time I aligned everything correctly!
 |
| Completed ProtoFlex Shield with 400-Point Breadboard |
The simple “Hello World” setup that I used to test the completed ProtoFlex is shown in the photo below. As you can see, the required connections are few. Both power and ground are readily available for connection to the rails on the left edge of the breadboard, and a ground connection is also available for the right-side rail. The three jumpers at the top of the breadboard are needed to connect power to the right-side rail. I also added a 0.01µF decoupling capacitor to each power rail because I know I’ll be using this setup for multi-processor projects. Finally, the LED near the upper-right corner of the breadboard is “resistorized,” so I was able to connect it directly between the 28X2’s B.2 pin and ground. A simple “Hello World” LED-blinking program was all I needed to make sure everything was working correctly.
 |
| Complete ProtoFlex “Hello World” Circuit |
The combination of the PICAXE-28X2 shield base and a 400-point breadboard implementation of the ProtoFlex shield is a powerful prototyping setup that’s really easy to use. I have already developed a couple of interesting projects with it, and have ideas for several more projects.
If you have any problems getting your ProtoFlex Shield to function properly, email me at Ron@JRHackett.net and I will do what I can to help.