Electronics experimentation is becoming ever more accessible. Development boards like Arduino (and clones) have brought the cost and difficulty of integrating computing power into projects down to very manageable levels, and a variety of components suppliers now allow you to buy everything from resistors to transistors to innumerable integrated circuits in manageable quantities.
But a bag full of components isn’t the only key to painless prototyping. That’s why it’s nice to see an evolution of inexpensive and clever tools in progress. For instance, getting the proper type of power to your project can involve more electrical shenanigans than really ought to be necessary for every single prototype. I’ve personally resorted to cutting up “wall wart” power supplies, which works, but isn’t really that clean. If you don’t have a proper bench supply (or don’t want to lug it with you when away from the bench) there are some neat devices which plug into a breadboard that can do the job properly.
The most interesting of these “proper” supplies that I’ve seen recently is this “Toaster” device. It can obtain power from both mini and micro USB connectors with a really neat over/under board footprint which you might add to your own bag of design tricks. The Toaster supplies power in 3.3V, 5V, and a variable voltage of between 5-16V to a breadboard.
These three voltage supplies, as well as a ground, plug into the board’s rails using double rows of pin headers which are far superior to the single-pin-per-rail scheme often used. That always seems to result in bent pins. This simple board allows you to accommodate projects demanding a variety of voltages.
