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Jumperless: Breadboard Without Jumper
- p1mrx 3y ago> USB Mini is pretty uncommon nowadays, even though it's the best USB port ever made, and I refuse to change my mind on that. Uh, okay. At least they did it on purpose.
- least 3y agoIt's not the first time I've seen this opinion shared among the 'maker' crowd. I'm still not really sure why, but between type B which is very large and micro, which is fragile and awful, it was a good middle ground. The lack of adoption is probably the biggest pain point for usb mini, that and type c is now available, though type c has its own pain points. Maybe it's just easy to work with? I know for quite a while a lot of ergonomic keyboard designs featured mini usb as well.
- tjohns 3y agoUSB Mini also had a design flaw which caused the port to wear out prematurely (after only about 1,000 insertions), which was why the industry transitioned to USB Micro so quickly (which is rated for about 10,000 insertions). https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/18552/why-was-mini-usb-deprecated-in-favor-of-micro-usb https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/18552/why-wa...
- cl3misch 3y agoAccording to the link, the 1000 number is related to the initial USB mini design with flat sides. It got changed to the kinked sides which we all know and which has... 5000 insertions. Still not a lot, so the argument is the same.
- least 3y agoI've snapped more micro-usb connectors than any other type that I can think of, which might be why i view them as not being very durable, but I've also used quite a few more devices that use micro-usb than mini, so it's not exactly a fair comparison. In either case, USB type C seems to be mostly better than either.
- a_rabid_squid 3y agoThe main thing is that without any strain relief like on a bare PCB like this, USB mini seems to hold up better for almost psychological reasons. The shape makes you tend to plug it in straight and put less pressure at an up/down angle. I actually love USB-C for similar reasons, but sending USB 2.0 signals and power over USB-C feels weirdly misleading and janky nowadays. That being said, I’m literally the guy whose semi-fringe opinions about USB ports you’re discussing, so I have a clear bias.
- j-pb 3y agoHaving a wired connection to a wireless breadboard seems inconsistent. In for the penny in for the pound: Drum power connection + Bluetooth connectivity only!
- qwery 3y ago> Maybe it's just easy to work with? Yeah, that's my impression anyway. The Mini connector is a comfortable size to work with, particularly considering DIY electronics at home was usually a through-hole affair a decade or so ago. Type B is large enough to get in the way (although it being so chonky is rather satisfying) and micro wasn't significantly smaller in general terms but was fiddly for soldering or probing etc. I'm not sure if USB Micro connectors were even generally available as through-hole? Appendage: > for quite a while a lot of ergonomic keyboard designs featured mini usb as well. Thinking about it, a lot of them probably used off the shelf Arduino Nano(?) based boards, which most commonly featured the USB Mini connector.
- a_rabid_squid 3y agoAlso, I like that I can clearly see which way it's supposed to plug in. And if there's a genuine Arduino Nano on the top headers, it's kinda weird to have 2 different ports on the same board. Obviously there are tons of compatible boards with different plugs. That being said, these are just excuses to back up my emotional decision. I just really like USB Mini. And I know most people don't have USB Mini cables laying around so I provide a hand painted and glittered pink cable with these.
- scld 3y agoThomas Edison also electrocuted an elephant on purpose, but it remains a bad idea.
- p1mrx 3y agoEdison did nothing wrong. The elephant was charging.
- civilitty 3y agoFinally someone made this! I’ve been waiting for a crosspoint switch based breadboard since I first found out about crosspoint switches. Unfortunately this looks like it uses some rather limited parts probably for cost reason so the switches only support +-8v at 1MHz. Even a decade ago the SOTA was over a GHz with a much wider voltage range ($$$$$$).
- milesvp 3y agoYeah, selling for $289. I’m guessing these aren’t cheap to make. At least $30 BOM, but since it’s small batch, might have even made the mistake of letting the BOM get up to $100. I’m not sure who the taget audience is. I want to impulse buy, but I’m not convinced yet that it would improve my workflow. The video shows a rats nest, but the first rule of breadboarding is to use wires that make it easy to trace. Worse, is now there’s one more layer to debug. My suspicion is that this is a tool that will be solid in a few iterations, and will eliminate many of the headaches breadboards add not mentioned in the video, namely parasitic capacitance and inductance. I am interested in what I could do with the thing based on the last part of the video though. Being able to trivially reroute signals in realtume could open up a lot of possibilities.
- ansible 3y agoThis is a super-neat design, and I'm glad someone has made it. But I would never buy it, in part because of the cost. It is really neat though.
- type0 3y agoYou need to tinker often for it to be useful. I find less and less usage for the breadboards when you can simulate most of the things in software and then put it on the prototype board in a neat package
- synecdoche 3y agoWhich simulation software would you recommend?
- LoganDark 3y agowithout jumper..? I'm confused, how's this different from a normal breadboard? And what's being shown in the gallery?
- gizmo686 3y agoIn a normal breadboard, you dynamically link different rows with physical jumper cables. The linked breadboard allows you to dymamically connect rows using software.
- LoganDark 3y agoOh, that's really neat! I was confused by all the microcontroller-esque things being shown, I couldn't tell what was the actual product or not, couldn't find an actual description of its functionality. Needs a README imho.
- cstrahan 3y ago> Needs a README imho Is the “Description” section at the top not sufficient? “Description Using a bunch of analog crosspoint switches wired together into one bigger switch, Jumperless makes real, fully analog hardware connections between any points on the board or the Arduino Nano header at the top via serial, instead of needing to use jumper wires.” Admittedly, the HackADay layout is pretty atrocious, and at east on an iPhone, the description is several pages down, after the picture gallery and a bunch of empty white space. Nonetheless, the “description” section is at the very top of the main textual content of the page. Not much the project creator can do to fix HackADay’s bad layout, sadly.
- nuancebydefault 3y agoIf I understand how it works correctly, this is much more than a breadboard for the 'lazy' who don't want to physically connect contect points. Since everything is switchable at high speed, you could for example create a clock signal on all clock inputs and then dynamically connect hi/lo voltages and inputs and outputs. You could for example physically have 3 clocked NAND gates and use them as a series of hundreds of NAND gates? Simulate an FPGA?
- therein 3y agoExactly what I was thinking. It is very cool. It would be the perfect thing to demonstrate what an FPGA does.
- cbsks 3y agoThis would be really useful for doing automated testing of embedded devices. I hope it succeeds!
- jacquesm 3y agoTwo years ago this is where the project was, this seems to be a substantial step in the right direction. https://hackaday.com/2021/06/23/silicon-jumpers-make-this-wire-free-breadboard-programmable/ https://hackaday.com/2021/06/23/silicon-jumpers-make-this-wi... I'm definitely going to have a look at this, it's a bit like an FPGA meets breadboard and that's a nice middle ground for being able to connect all kinds of stuff in a structured manner without breaking out the soldering iron until it is absolutely necessary. If they can be manufactured cheap enough you could even use them as a temporary stand-in for a PCB until you're 100% sure of what you plan to do, even in small series with very rapid turnaround and the ability to fix things on the fly if necessary. Lovely work this, amazing progress and stamina to stick with it.
- anfractuosity 3y agoI was thinking in some respects it seems a bit like an FPAA. Just been looking at https://hasler.ece.gatech.edu/FPAA_IEEEXPlore_2020.pdf https://hasler.ece.gatech.edu/FPAA_IEEEXPlore_2020.pdf.
- jacquesm 3y agoNeat. I wonder how easy it would be to 'gang' these to make larger breadboards. I've used the regular ones for designs with 10's of chips and it can get pretty crowded with all of the wiring especially for buses and clock nets. A couple of these would make things far more organized.
- a_rabid_squid 3y agoThat’s a good idea! In fact, it’s been requested a few times so I think Rev 4 will have card-edge connectors to do thar
- jacquesm 3y agoCool, do keep me posted please, email in profile. Very nice project!
- Animats 3y agoWhat are the voltage and frequency range of the crossbar?
- p1mrx 3y ago"-8V to +8V, up to around 1 MHz before signal quality starts to degrade"
- Animats 3y agoOK. That's good enough for audio and for analog control systems.
- jacquesm 3y agoHe comments to wait for the next release for audio applications.
- a_rabid_squid 3y agoThat revision actually came out a month ago and I forgot to update the details. Thanks for pointing that out!
- d--b 3y agoNice, it's like Excel for hardware :D
- a_rabid_squid 3y agoPlease don’t build the entire basis for modern society on a Jumperless, that’s way too much pressure.
- reportgunner 3y agoWe just need a Jumperless Excel Add-In that's all.
- d--b 3y agoDon’t worry, we’ll start with that, and we’ll replace it when we have the means to do so.
- nerpderp82 3y agoI think you would also have to route the signals through a PGA network first.
- a_rabid_squid 3y agoHere's the video for anyone interested https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_k0aKM68Xl4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_k0aKM68Xl4