The world of makers is amazing and, whenever I try to update myself on what is going on to write about it, I cannot help but think of Blade Runner and home made robots. I’m sure it will happen, and many of them will have an evolution of the Arduino board to run them. So today’s makers love to experiment to understand how that will happen.
J. Pagliaccio and B. Reidy think it will go the way of open source and 3D printing, so they developed SCADuino, a 3D printable Arduino breadboard (which is basically a solderless construction base for prototyping electronics) using the OpenSCAD software.
The open source software is used to create solid 3D CAD models but, instead of having you actually design the object the “old fashioned way”, it does this by acting as a 3D-compiler: it reads in a script file that describes the 3D object and then renders the 3D model from the script file.
The two bloggers used the Breadboard Arduino design as a model for their 3D printable board and for the assembly of all components they retrieved from websites such as Sparkfun and Adafruit. They also suggest using an Arduino Uno R3 for programming the SCADuino.
Using the SCADboard library, they developed two versions: one with normal size thru holes and one with oversized thru holes that can fit two wires: all you need to build them is some free software (OpenSCAD; MakerWare, Blender, etc.) a few resistors and capacitors, a couple of LED’s. And yes, of course, a 3D printer. In the end it might be easier to just get a normal breadboard but nothing beats making it yourself.
