Not A Number

As a kid, I always like those 300-in-One Electronic Project Lab toys. Although not really useful for real work, it was nice to have everything in one place. I decided to attempt to build one the way I want it to be. So far, I just have the power supply and external connectors set up. I can set it to unipolar +9V  or +18Vor bipolar +9/GND/-9 volts for analog work. Plus dedicated +5V and +3.3V rails. I used the dead simple method of generating a bipolar supply, I simple used two battery packs in series. Eventually I may upgrade to some sort of switcher circuit, but you can’t beat the pair of batteries for a low noise power source.

I included easy attachment points for connecting an oscilloscope or multimeter and phono jacks for routing audio signals and testing homebrew audio effects. By putting them near the edge I can move the board around without the cables interfering with teh breadboard or falling out.

I am using a random cigar box, they make great project boxes and can be gotten cheaply or for free from cigar shops. It turned out quite attractive if I do say so with its red/black motif. I wonder if I can find solid black breadboards to keep it on theme.

After this, I will add some panel meters and LEDs, some of the more common things needed when breadboarding. I am leaning towards a rotary encoder, a couple buttons, and a Voltmeter at the moment. Unlike the 300-in-1 style kit, I will have proper debouncing and quadrature circuitry built in to give nice clean logic level outputs and high impedance inputs.