So I liked this video a lot - very cool to see a Fieldfox actually quantify the breadboard's losses like that. But I disagree with your conclusion saying that breadboards are fine for medium speed and medium power circuits based on the fact that S21 is extremely low at 10MHz. The problem with breadboarding isn't always signal attenuation. For example try prototyping a 500kHz, 2A SEPIC converter on a breadboard. That is low frequency, medium power. There would be almost no attentuation in magnitude of voltage or current. And yet, the performance will be abysmal and the feedback loop may not even operate correctly. The problem isn't attenuation, it's the added inductances and capacitances which would lead to phase shifts, unwanted ringing, and sometimes full blown resonance at certain nodes in the circuit. Even a slight amount of ringing on a FET's gate can lead to chaos. I am sure you know this already but I think beginners watching the video may get the wrong idea of what a breadboard can handle.

@KeysightLabs

3 жыл бұрын

This is an excellent point! I agree 100%

0:30 Bonus points for that К155ИД1 just casually sitting there

When they make a breadboard that takes BGAs, sign me up. Seriously, I'd be interested in seeing S21 measurements between *unconnected* adjacent columns - i.e. crosstalk. Plug in your fixture's G-S-S-G on 4 adjacent columns then use a very short, low inductance jumper to tie the grounds together. I suspect you'll get something around -20 dB, maybe even closer to -15. I remember back when I was in my teens, doing a simple LM386 amplifier circuit and wondering why my output level was so low. I could distinctly hear my music, it was just quiet. Then I realized I had the headphone jack wire one column away from my amplifier's output with no DC connection - just coupling through the parasitic C between columns! Gave me a new appreciation for parasitics. Also maybe use a nicer fixture like www.zebax.com/doc/ZXACC/ZX00SMAH.pdf? Seeing a SMA going into a breadboard would be pretty funny, but might actually give more accurate measurements too.

@KeysightLabs

4 жыл бұрын

I like those ideas a LOT.

@AndrewZonenberg

4 жыл бұрын

@@KeysightLabs Then maybe you could follow up on that by disassembling a breadboard, measuring dimensions of the contact strips, and modeling them in ADS and seeing how close you can get the field solver model to match the measured S2P. I might actually try to do a 2D thick-metal model in Sonnet later on and see how that looks. Maybe also try doing some eye patterns of common low/mid speed protocols, like SPI from 100 Kbps out to tens or hundreds of Mbps?

@xmun9236

4 жыл бұрын

You can get yourself a solderless BGA breakout board. Something like this : e2e.ti.com/support/microcontrollers/hercules/f/312/t/462170

Did you say... a 6 FIGA HERTZ at 6:24?? :D Welcome to the club!

@wiffygaming1068

4 жыл бұрын

dont think so...

@KeysightLabs

4 жыл бұрын

Man, I flub soooooo many words it's not even funny

@aamirmasoodabbasi9660

4 жыл бұрын

maybe he said Fiescal 😂

@aamirmasoodabbasi9660

4 жыл бұрын

maybe he said Fiescal 😂

@tiny_toilet

4 жыл бұрын

@@KeysightLabs Dude, you do great. I even watch some of the ones I don't really care about, and I also usually hate everyone.

After literally melting my breadboard I can quite safely suggest not to build a ghetto (not microcontrolled) BLDC power driver circuit if you are not replicating a known schematic. Very fun, though!

@voltariantechnologyinc.8594

4 жыл бұрын

I used a breadboard to prototype a slayer exciter and a blown transistor melted some holes in mine...

I mostly make testbilds just soldering the components together "dead bug style", this is in Danish called "fuglerede" (translates to "Birds Nest")

@vinny142

4 жыл бұрын

@MichaelKingsfordGray "I used that method in the 1960s. Nothing new." Yeah, you tell him who's the boss man, keep up it up!

3:50 I think this must be a bad contact (i.e. capacitance in series). -50dB at 580kHz seems impossible.

@jjoonathan7178

4 жыл бұрын

Yeah, that and breadboards have bad contacts like swiss cheese has holes.

@hugoflores5806

3 жыл бұрын

@@jjoonathan7178 It depends on the brand. One of Ben Eater's videos talks about breadboards

It’s like a Mythbusters episode. Great info!

Wave sign up link: bit.ly/YTWave2020 Ok ok, I know. There are a LOT of variables when it comes to breadboards and I'm sure many of you are here to comment with other tests I should run. AWESOME! I'd love to come back to this topic and do a deeper dive with it and have a longer video later this year. Put your thoughts and worst breadboard horror story below!

@0xbenedikt

4 жыл бұрын

**** [Add comment pointing to main CTA and pin it]: check!

@0xbenedikt

4 жыл бұрын

My main gripe with breadboards are the bad connection problems. I usually spin a small PCB to prototype or solder up the circuit on perfboard.

I came here from Wave giveaway site, but damn, I'll stay because of the content! Love the lack of formality and practical projects mixed with a bit of madness!

Congratulations to the winners! And to Daniel for your new fashion line, I think Olivia Palermo finally has some true competition.

I'm so happy that ElectroBoom introduced me to Keysight's channel :-D

Lookin good! Grats to the winners! Dig the earrings.

Up vote for earring demo with EDM music. Awesome.

1:15 after double 'E' s talk tech, keysight now proudly presents double 'E' s talk techo

@KeysightLabs

4 жыл бұрын

LOL!

Tier 1 prize goes to: Chris "Hack"

@HoppyStar

4 жыл бұрын

Yaghiyah Brenner My heart skipped a beat for a second 😅

@jasonwitt8619

4 жыл бұрын

@@HoppyStar Congrats mate, hope you have fun with all that gear

@chrishack4723

4 жыл бұрын

Thanks guys, I will...

This is really interesting. Even being just out of college I was suspect of that 10MHz limit. I had built a 100MHz FM transmitter with a breadboard that was actually able to pretty clearly transmit.

I haven't used a solderless Breadboard in many years, as there aren't enough circuit nodes to be useful. A technique I do still use is the Veroboard with the square pads, and Vero "Speedwire" which uses enamelled wire point-to-point soldered connections, routed with plastic combs. This will give a surprisingly high board density and performance, approaching that of a basic PCB. Perfectly fine for typical microcontroller speeds. With adapter-boards that breakout SMT-chip pinouts to a 0.1" pitch, prototyping with square-pad Veroboard is still a viable technique.

I like retro table in the background, 8-bit Atari was my first computer

Great breadboard tips. Congrats to the winners, again!

Hilarious and educational, keep up the good work.

I use breadboards a lot! I am a computer science student with a high intrest in electronics (RF and EMC in particular). I use bread boards a lot for prototyping microcontrollers, like a ATmega328P, to test te circuit before making it on a perf board. Really handy to modify low frequency circuits!

Love the video!

Would the maximum frequency be related to the mstl characteristics of the parallel rows?

That pair of electro earrings scene it's kinda cool.

i use breadboards and they mostly work fine but i tried a precise chronometer and it delayed the time by 1 ms every 23 seconds but when i used a regular pcb it didn't have the same issue

Fashion forward! Test Equipment, snging, ditties, fashion.. this channel is going places!

nice earnings Daniel. i use breadboard for every prototype or tinkering and things get a lot messy.

Great video, thanks :)

3:55 that low cut filter is kind of weird, that should not happen on a connection, what about DC? So apparently you have a loose contact in somewhere in there...

Prizes come second, KNOWLEDGE IS IMPORTANT! (Of course, you still need some equipment to apply them, but it comes second)

Sure do need a REAL Oscilloscope in my life.

Enjoyed your video. I found it after doing a search on VNA Breadboards and was surprised when yours came up. I have been working on software for the low cost NanoVNA to allow measuring power rails impedance. The breadboard makes it easy to build up different decoupling networks to test the software. Eventually, I will move onto testing with a PCB. The NanoVNA is nice as it only costs about $50 and can provide some decent data for the RF hobbyist. I've seen various numbers tossed around for breadboards speeds. For fun someone on EEVBlog started a contest where the idea was to construct an oscillator using a breadboard. As you can imagine, the rules had to be clarified as the speeds went up. The definition of wires vs components became very important. In the end, I was limited by my test equipment. Are you still planning a part II?

I like to use them but I never consider to use them with RF signals.Congratulations to the winners!

At 3:23 the 1:1 patched ports don't look like they would HP filter the signal .... at least DC & LF signals should come through if directly patched. Maybe one jumper wire was broken / has had a bad contact and hence the coupling was only capacitive (hence the HP behaviour) ... @Keysight Labs : What do you think are the reasons here?

Breadboards are very useful! What you have not tested is the capacitive crosstalk between neighboring rows - in a student lab in the second year we build a CE amplifier on these breadboards with a 2N3904 which most of the time ends up with base and collector in neighboring rows. This creates a parasitic capacitance in the order of 10 pF between base and collector which - due to the Miller effect - reduces the achievable bandwith of the amplifier to below 1 MHz as compared to a simulated bandwith of 30-50 MHz. Luckily, since our students would not be able to measure such a high bandwith with our lab equipment!

@KeysightLabs

4 жыл бұрын

Someone recommended an S21 on a neighboring row, I'll have to try it when I get the FieldFox back

I once assembled simple LED clock prototype on the breadboard using 8bit PIC at 4MHz. The time deviation per day was huge -> more than 30 minutes. So when I transferred the design on PCB I had to remove all compensations I made in the code.

Keysight better put the earrings in the catalog. Thanks again for the informative and entertaining videos.

Bread Boards have they're place to be sure. Most RF work is not one of them. Just plain bad Ju Ju. Better to go DEAD BUG build. Or even Point to point.

Hi, You can get these perma proto boards that allow you to transfer your bread board circuit layout exactly like you built it, they are available at adafruit in various bread board sizes. I don't usually have a problem with bread boards and they are good for an experimental circuit you want to try, but, maybe not make permanent on perf or pcb. Best, C.

Yeah!! That's really a usefull analysis, I've always wanted to do this measurement at my place. But with this equipment it is much much easier and quicker! :)

The inevitable bad contact, either due to bad cable, or bad point in the breadboard, has always been the main problem in my breadboard builds. Quality varies wildly from (eBay) sellers, and really good ones are hard to find.

the inter capacitance between rows are ~2pf.

I used the breadboards up to 8MHz and never had a problem (by choosing the right topology). In my opinion, for high frequency circuits, the conductors should be as short as possible. It's always good to know the limits of applying something. It was interesting. Thanks.

I like to use them but I never consider to use them with RF signals. Hope to be lucky next time.

I love breadboard prototyping because whenever I prototype on veroboard, it doesn't work out. I don't know why maybe additional exposed copper pads? Any advice anyone?

@anonimo1633

4 жыл бұрын

Most of the times, probably 95%, it's wrong connections. Even when you are sure everything is exactly as it was on the breadboard, something(s) is wrong. The remaining 5% can be anything... From flux residue on high impedance traces, to crosstalk,...

@DoctorThe113

4 жыл бұрын

@@anonimo1633 thanks for the info.

Good Video

I use my breadboards for experimenting but I also use one for soldering pin headers nicely onto my Arduino Nano's for example that way I make sure that the pins are all in line and standing straight up so I know that my Arduino will always fit perfectly into all my breadboards, but when you do that you should dedicate an old breadboard to your pin header soldering because after a while you'll see the plastic starts to deform and or melt in some places, you're definitely gonna destroy it over time but it's a handy way for soldering pin headers in a consistent way that will fit onto every other breadboard... well, most of them.

@KeysightLabs

3 жыл бұрын

That's a good idea

I use them for low frequancies like sound waves app.

Breadboards are great for quick and dirty stuff, iterating and hotswapping parts, but they'll drive you crazy if you try and do high precision anything. If things start acting funny when you wiggle random stuff slightly - solder it and save your sanity. I like to use as few jumpers as possible, it makes for a fun layout challenge of it's own. If you need to add jumpers to increase available fanout on more than one or two nodes you need to move on to something better, even perfboard gives you much more routing options.

Build it on a breadboard, does it work? #1 No, you've probably screwed up the interconnects or your design is wrong. #2 It's an RF circuit and you ought to know better than to risk a breadboard #3 Breadboards are so 1980s but *very useful* providing you understand their limitations. Thanks for an excellent video dude.

@KeysightLabs

4 жыл бұрын

This is a good summary! Especially #1

A really interesting topic in the upcoming video. There is a project for a device that i take the designed of it from the Japanese company Hioki and when applying the design to the bread board, I found a difference with the frequencies of some sections of the oscillator circuit. So, in some cases, it is not possible to use the bread board, because it can create parasitic capacities in the tracks, and also the quality of the bread board can affect the results. In the circuit that you test it So in the end tkanks for posting god bless

I'm just a disabled putz that loves to play with electronics to keep my brain off of the pain. I use breadboards a lot. I can't afford to make anything permanent with PCBs but it's fun to build things. Thx for the vid. 👍👍

I'm not sure that I could live without Pomona mini-hooks! However, I know that I can live without them hanging from my ears. :-) Nice video.

Those are some good looking earrings! Looking stylish Daniel!

Now I can blame the breadboard for my fails!

I was making a prototype of a simple radio signal amplivier on a breadboard and it worked horible. I coldn't figuire out what was wrong.😅 Then i just soldered it all together on a pcb and it worked all right.👌

How can we be sure that our names are in the name picker for this giveaway?

Breadboards are wonderful to use cause I'm always constantly changing things. But go into switch mode power supplies and logic circuits and you'll have problems, probably, depending on what you're using. In all cases, always look up that data sheet! Also try EMI breadboard testing sometime if it hasn't been done yet. Nice vid overall. Didn't know you could do up to 100+ megacycles with that mess lol.

Btw. How do Keysight make prototypes?

@KeysightLabs

4 жыл бұрын

Depends. We have lots of great simulation tools, and do a few board revs as needed. Exclusively SMD, though.

Maybe you should have started with some of that old school Radio Shack solid Black/White wire spool which was used for inductance coils for a receiving antenna.

@DandyDon1

4 жыл бұрын

When I was in high school in the 1970s we were taught to use brass escutcheon pins nailed into a piece of wood for soldered bread boarding.

I think the 10 MHz are still a very good rule of thumb - on the safe side even for most transients and crappy boards. if you have anything higher frequency you can not really get any useful numbers for a final solid design from it - if you need some extra filtering or smoothing you need to measure that on the actual layout as the breadboard will have too much of an impact there. (But i have seen them used together with a Cyclone III to hock up some extra stuff to the DDR )

@Keysight Labs I do hope that the solder work in your professional gear is better than we can see at 0:58...

@Keysight Labs You know those bandwidth and response measurements you just showed, about them...... ....still can't use them for my custom autonomous UAV antennas without a FieldFox or other VNA!!!!

@RobertSzasz

4 жыл бұрын

NanoVNA v2?

I'm using breadboards, prototype PCB's with dots and homemade PCB's.. All depends on what i need to do. For example, when i need some heavy load, etc, i may use combination of breadboard and prototype PCB, in that case, transistors and heavy part are soldered on prototype PCB, but low level logic are on breadboard. In some cases i create projects in parts - some module at project starting are assembled on breadboard, after testing, PCB are created and soldered and parts from breadboard are disassembled to make place for next project module.. After that PCB's finalized part are connected to breadboard for next module testing.. I don't use cheap breadboards and have lots of good quality board's.. This eliminate debugging for bad connection reason.. Anyway, breadboards have current limits as it is with any type of connector's and, usually, i take it in account.. By experience - breadboards can handle 20MHz without any problem.. Long time ago, i tested FM stereo modulator and mini bare bones (with TO92 case transistors) FM transmitter on breadboard - at the end it worked, but i need to put some other capacitors, not as planned, because with calculated values i can't get transmitter in the needed frequency range.. This situation was awful for debugging.. :D One time when i assembled new project, i accidentally shorted power lines on breadboard with jumper wires. Luckily, i left fuse in 12V power wire from previous project.. I understand my mistake when i see how fuse blows up like small bulb.. :D

I dont know everything you explained... but why I am so interesting with this video and this channel ? -_- I think i must learn something in here .. maybe..

"Life is like a box of breadboards" ... of course it is... it's a better analogy than a box of chocolates... but what about a box of Chocolate Breadboards!? Hmm... To answer your question: I use breadboards at home for prototyping stuff, mostly Arduino or Rasberry Pi based. At work the hardware engineers cook up a PCB or make a LPKF prototype, rarely do we use a breadboards. Good to know the limits -Thanks a bunch for posting this video.

WOO HOOO!!! I am so excited to be the tier 1 winner! I've already replied to the email with the documents... Just let me know what's next! I'm really looking forward to using that DSOX6004A oscilloscope...

@KeysightLabs

4 жыл бұрын

Congrats!

@chrishack4723

4 жыл бұрын

@@KeysightLabs Thanks! I'm really just blown away by this. Been entering since 2018 and honestly didn't think I'd have a chance...

Once I assembled a circuit on a breadboard and it did not work whatever I tried. I even contacted a man from Japan who designed this circuit, he did not help either. Then I decided that circuit has some flaws and it is an opportunity to design my own version of it. So I spent a lot of time reading about the topic and finally built my own version of the same device (floppy emulator for Apple II computer). And when this project come to an end I decided to give another chance to breadboard circuit. I checked every connection and found that one leg of microcontroller had no contact with adjacent wire in the same row. So, sometimes a bad breadboard can give you a chance to learn and build something by yourself.

I didn't enter the giveaway but I did love the fireworks at the end.

I play around testing new ideas with them but nothing serious. Love teaching people electronics with simple led circuits on them. Gets them hooked quickly on electronics hobby

К115ИД1 wow, vintage tech :D

So what you are saying is that instead of buying expensive RF filters in my circuits, I should replace them with tuned pieces of bread board and wires? ^^'

@KeysightLabs

3 жыл бұрын

Do it. And report back

I didn't realize when I asked that this was a giveaway video haha

Congratulations for the winners. I hope I can win a oscilloscope this time, to Sri Lanka :)

One more week to go, I'm still hoping for that scope :)

i love them

Maybe thats the reason why my measurements fails. Thanks for the video!

1:09 Perfect time for someone to walk in on you watching this. Hah

Just about everything I testbuild with is surface-mount so I'll typically just run jumpers from some SMD breakout boards.

I think the 10MHz "rule of thumb" comes more from the issues due to cross-talk, unwanted coupling due to the parasitic capacitance and poorly defined impedances. Also breadboards are notorious for poor contacts which could give you a lot of bizarre problems at higher frequencies (DC circuit is broken but RF still gets through due to capacitive coupling and such). I am building HAM radio receivers (1-30MHz) and I can't imagine getting one perform satisfactorily on a breadboard - it would be super "touchy", that would drive me crazy. But I am not worried too much about running digital circuits with microcontrollers with fast edges on a breadboard - those aren't that sensitive for it to cause problems in most common cases.

@Gameboygenius

4 жыл бұрын

DC circuit is broken but RF gets through? Where have I heard this? Oh right 3:45 a strange low cut...

The graphic pop at 7:01 is wrong as it said Tier 2 prize and not Tier 1.

@KeysightLabs

4 жыл бұрын

Shucks, good catch! We'll fix it for next Friday.

What I want to know is who has ever seen the MB102 with "gold plating" as claimed on every $2 breadboard box from China? I think the terminal plating quality is the primary factor in breadboards getting a reputation for bad/unreliable connections. Some are plated too thick and it makes them difficult to insert pins, while others are too thin and corrode easily. Some are shipped pre-corroded for good measure. I had a couple of projects where I cut up breadboards to make my own connectors. Even the ones that look good on the bottom can have corrosion issues in the pin contact region. You really can't tell unless you pull all of the terminals and look. I just wish someone sold a gold plated contact version at a fair price that is feasible for retro computer shenanigans @ 8-12 breadboards. I'm not forking over $30-$50 each in that kind of quantity. I'll just etch a board from scratch before I'll pay $500 for a temp breadboard setup.

Want a horror story with a breadboard, eh? Melted it and it caught on fire from a 500mA 5V usb connection. Was testing a little usb powered circuit. IT all went to hell when one of the BJT's decided to go full nuclear due to I assume a static shock, and the USB didn't turn off, it was the power draw within spec. And, no. It wasn't the BJT that caused the fire. It was the internal tracks of the breadboard. Breadboards are too niche.

We learned a lot about Daniel on this one! LOL

I just realized this was 2020 keysight wave event and video -_-.

I use solderless breadboards all the time at 20Mhz, and sometimes at 80Mhz, and I've never had any horror stories. Love it.

Wow

Need an oscilloscope, never could afford one.. just a bitty tiny entry one 😍👍🚀

Breadboards are my bread and butter, just kidding but they do have their purposes.

One of my classmates, accidentally connected full AC voltage to our pic microcontroller and some LEDs on a breadboard. one capacitor made a loud bang.

@ParedCheese

4 жыл бұрын

"Accidentally". 🤔

I always use the breadborads before creating a prototype and the final pcb, it is an easy way to test the schemes and, above all, the design of the RF circuits. 1:10, rave time? lllol ...

I love breadboards. When my circuit doesn't work properly, it's always a mistake I've made. However, I can't stand jumper wires. They are usually small gauge wire and have horrible pin/socket ends.

Rule of thumb for breadboards? Avoid 830 tie point MB-102 breadboards. Pretty much every Taiwanese or American ones are good to go. KH, EIC, WBU are some of the good series that are reliable.

But won't the quality of the breadboard contacts matter and give different results ?

@KeysightLabs

4 жыл бұрын

I tried three different ones I had, and they all came out roughly the same. But, there is certainly a range of quality out there. The low-cut phenomena was almost certainly a breadboard quality issue.

I use breadboards all the time. It makes it way easier to expand on a circuit. I mean, if Ben Eater can build an entire computer with breadboards, they've gotta have some merit.

@KeysightLabs

4 жыл бұрын

Right!?

My horrible story about breadboards is at the college where the teacher had no idea about breadboards (row and column continuity). We have done many experiments after experiments using op-amps, resistors, 555 timers but they failed. I went home and research about breadboard and I was triggered! I mean how a teacher of an electronics degree don't know about breadboards 🤨 I don't mind that much about that situation because "everything is useful in moderation, a good servant or a bad master"

I use it for every prototype

I’ll bet David Mathews hears that a lot 😀