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This page is archived material from a previous course. Please check for updated material.

    Student Prototype Board

    Note that physical layout may differ slightly from board to board.


    Details

    (1) Power Input – comes from the benchtop power supply with a proprietary connector.   Supplies +15V/-15V/+5V/ground to the board.


    (2) BNC inputs –  use cables with BNC connectors to connect the board to oscilloscopes, function generators, or other lab equipment.  Note that the shield of all equipment connected through the BNC is connected to ground on the board – this may intentionally (or unintentionally) be used to ground all of the equipment on your benchtop.


    (3) Potentiometer – the three pins just beside the board connect to the potentiometer of the knob.  Check the rating of the potentiometer to see the resistance (most boards are 10 kohms)


    4) BCD LED Display – a 2-digit LED display, programmed through Binary Coded Decimal.  A 5V signal provided to each pin displays the value on the LED.  You can see the datasheet on the BCD driver, the DM9368N.


    (5) Solderless breadboard. Note that the power buses on these and ~90% of the solderless breadboards you see will have a discontinuity in them, and will require short jumpers to connect the left-side and right-side of the board.  Scroll through about half-way through this online tutorial to read up on the reasoning for the break:  Sparkfun Tutorial – Beginning Embedded Electronics.

    (6)  four SPDT switches – These four slide switches are Single Pole Double Throw (read here for further information on different switch configurations and terminology).  The centre  pin is the common pin, and will connect to either the top pin or bottom pin.


    (7) two debounced switches –   Both of these switches produce clean debounced pulses when the button is pressed.  Each button produces both an active-high and an active-low signal.   Note that any mechanical switch actually produces noise, which can be suppressed either by debouncing in hardware or debouncing in software (with increasing levels of complexity).


    (8) power pins – all of these pins can be used to connect to the power buses on the solderless breadboard.   Note that all of these pins connect to one antoher through the board – if you have problems where an unknown part of a circuit is shorting the board, you can disconnect power to each of the buses to localize the short to a specific part of the circuit.


    (9) 9-pin DSUB connector.  You can connect the prototype board to devices using a 9-pin DSUB connector, most commonly found on older serial port devices communicating through RS-232.


    (10)  LED Indicators – use up to 8 LEDs on your board.   The LEDs are powered by the ULN2803A darlington transistor array, and turns on LEDs with a 5V signal is supplied to the pins.