Sometimes you use a tool for many years and suddenly you become aware of a feature that you never knew. Well that happened just to me.
If you are a faithfull reader of this blog you will have seen numerous schematics, breadboard layouts and stripboard layouts and they were all made with Fritzing. Fritzing is one of those valuable free tools that you really should check out. It is available from the Fritzing webpage where you can also find all kinds of projects: http://fritzing.org/home/
And after years of using Fritzing I just came after a feature I have never seen before and it is worth having a look.
Above you can see a breadboard layout made with Fritzing. It is from my weblog entry about controlling a led strip over wifi. You can find that entry here:
https://lucstechblog.blogspot.com/2018/04/rgb-strip-control-over-wifi-part-2.html
Now suppose you want to rebuild this layout yourself. This would give you no trouble bcause it is just a simple layout. For the sake of explanation let's do it.
What you would do is look at the screen and then place the components on the breadboard. Right ???
Yes but there is an easier way.
Load the design in Fritzing, chose print and just print it out.
After printing cut the picture with scissors and place it on the breadboard and just place the components where the picture displays them. The print Fritzing produces is real size !!!
For a simple layout like the one above this is overkill but look at the next layout.
Here things get a bit more complicated and then this will help you a lot !!!
As you can see the prints are really real size and it is easy to put the wires where they need to go. Just push them through the paper into the breadboard.
A simple trick that makes tinkering a lot easier.
However it gets better.
Look at this stripboard setup. It is from my article about controlling a led strip over wifi using an ESP-01.
If you want to reproduce it. Just print the stripboard layout from fritzing. Put it on a stripboard and place the components where the print shows them.
Just remember that with the stripboard version you need to place the print on the side where the components must be placed, not on the side where you solder the components !!!
Easy and efficient. Takes away a lot of work !!!
Till next time
Have fun.
Luc Volders
