Veroboard and How to Construct an Electronics Circuit

Electronics Circuit

In electronics, one has to know about circuit building. Circuit building is an essential skill if one is interested to build robots. Robots, need a brain or rather an intelligent brain that tells them what to do. In this case, electronic circuits are the controller for the robots.

There are the bread board, ‘vero board’ and ‘PCB’ (printed circuit board). These three are the types of electronics circuits. They are widely used all over the world. The cheapest one, is the ‘vero board’ and also one of the most popular technique.

A ‘vero board’ will have many holes lined up horizontally and vertically. What you need to know, is that each rows (horizontal) can be thought of as a horizontal wires. So, a ‘vero board’ contains many horizontal wires, row by row. If you have ten horizontal rows of holes, then you have ten horizontal wires. Note that you still need to have basic common sense of how to connect a complete, closed circuit.

With this new knowledge, now you can start building an electronics circuit. To insert the components into the board, you have to solder. Soldering is whereby you heat up the soldering iron tip until it is hot enough. Then you heat the particular spot you want to solder, for about 3 seconds maximum. Immediately apply a strand of flux material. This has to be done only once, ideally. If you have to re-solder the same part, it is no good.

However, take into account that soldering is a skill. The more you solder, the better you will be at it. Be wary of cold solder joints. A good soldering is when you see somewhat a shine on the joint. But, if you see dull looking texture, that appears greyish, then you have cold solder joint. A cold joint contains holes and cracks and voids inside. Therefore, it is not desirable and will produce joint failures in long term.

By Alfred Chai Wei Liang