Perf board layout questions

Skarr

Greetings!

I'm laying out a little circuit for a project on a Radio Shack perfboard - the one with 417 holes that's 47 x 72 mm. I have an OEM Stamp 2sx that I'm planning on using. I plan on soldering a 20-pin female header to the perfboard, and then inserting the Stamp into the header, so I can easily remove it from the board (in other words, when the project is completed, I want the Stamp back from my little sister-in-law!).

I've never worked with perfboard and I had a couple of questions regarding power and ground:

(1) Is it advisable to bridge a bunch of holes to create a bus? I have a voltage regulator supplying regulated +5V, and I figured I could duplicate the power bus on a solderless breadboard by solder bridging several holes together.

(2) What's the best way to create a ground bus? Same as in (1)? Where does the ground point get tied off to? In my project, I have a plastic case, and no real metal to ground everything to. Will that be a potential problem?

(3) Is it advisable to make connections simply by running insulated jumper wires to the various components?

Any other thoughts/comments are appreciated.

I have decent soldering skills so I'm pretty confident that I can make the proper connections, just not sure what the best approach is.

Thanks in advance.

Franklin

1) this depends on the ammount of power you plan to use, the more power the more this makes sense.
2) "ground" is just a term for the lowest potential in your circuit. The negative lead on your regulator would be considered "ground"
3) If your perf board has connected holes (some do) you can forget the wire in some cases. If this is a single use board you can sometimes solder components to the same point on the board but this can be tricky at times.

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- Stephen

Skarr

At the moment I plan on using the following components, in addition to the voltage regulator:

1 basic stamp
2 x IR LEDs (with 220 ohm resistors)
2 x IR photodiodes (with 22 kohm resistors)
3 x visible LEDs (with 470 ohm resistors)
1 standard servo

I'll have one battery connected to the VR providing regulated +5V to the stamp and the other components (LEDs and photodiodes), and another battery providing power to the servo.

Regarding the ground at the VR, should I solder a length of wire to the negative end of the VR, and then tie everything that needs a ground (servo, photodiodes, stamp) to that length of wire?

Thanks.

Jeff

T Chap

Radio shack has boards with busses, did you look at this one?

www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2103800&cp=&sr=1&origkw=pc+board&kw=pc+board&parentPage=search

This is what I would use for a small test board, it has the busses for GND and the voltage supply over several rows, you cam just bridge from your component to the buss with solder.

Skarr

Thanks for the tip. I did see a smaller version of that but thought it might be too big, plus I was a bit confused by the layout, although I understand it now and in retrospect see the advantages to that style.

I got started working on assembling the components and so far it's going OK. I created a power and ground bus from the voltage regulator by either using jumper wire or solder bridging. I like using the jumper wire because it's so much cleaner to lay out since the wires are precut and bent to the 0.1" standard hole spacing. Occasionally the wire insulation gets a little too hot and you can see it discolor or warp, but I'm not too concerned about that. I've been checking for proper voltage at various circuit locations and so far everything checks out. I just have a few more connections to make tonight and I should be able to test out the whole thing with the stamp.

Wish me luck.

Later,
JLS