Bench Testing Made Easy: Build a Custom Breakout Board!

[@jayhop]

I cannot overstate how helpful your videos are. You always elucidate at a perfect level for me, a beginner with a general base understanding of most things but sometimes needing step by step help filling knowledge gaps. I sometimes even forget I'm an idiot because you instill so much confidence that I'm tricked into thinking I could do this stuff on my own. Nobody else is quite in that lane imo. Cheers and thanks!

[@ResinChemTech]

Glad you find my videos are helpful. I do take the approach that some of the folks watching may be somewhat newer to the subject and therefore I try to explain the 'why' as well as the 'how'.... which can also make for some pretty long videos. But I also always include those chapter links so that someone with a little more experience can skip the parts that they might already know. Thanks for watching and the kind words. It is appreciated!

[@DaveA-sb7ue]

What an excellent idea and video! I'm not sure there are a lot of content creators like yourself that would go out of there way to help viewers like you showed here. What a lucky viewer and now we all get to benefit. Another job well done! Thank you

[@ResinChemTech]

Thanks Dave! There's a pretty long part in the middle that someone with soldering experience would probably want to skip over (which is why I always provide those chapter links), but I've heard from a lot of folks that are pretty new at soldering, so I wanted to cover the "how-to" part of putting the board together and soldering the components. But I've already found this board useful. As always, thanks for watching and thanks for the comment!

[@mr.bianchirider8126]

Yet another great video. I’ve been hesitant to switch from ESP8266 to ESP32 due to the breadboard issue and the lack of need for that many pins for my projects. This video talked me into trying out ESP32.

[@ResinChemTech]

I still love to use the D1 Mini for its small size, but I do find myself starting to use the ESP32 Mini in more and more of my projects. The cost differential isn't nearly as large as it used to be and more projects/libraries are starting to drop support for the ESP8266 (like sound-reactive WLED). And for those projects where I only need a few pins, I generally only use the D1 Mini - equivalent pins on the ESP32 Mini. But yeah... breadboards can be an issue. There are "narrow" versions of the ESP32 NodeMCU-style that are a bit more breadboard friendly if you want to try to track those down. Thanks for watching and the kind words. I greatly appreciate it!

[@rodneysmith1750]

Excellent project for a weekend! Thanks for sharing.

[@ResinChemTech]

It was a pretty quick and fun project... at least for me! And I have a board I can use for future projects as well. As always, thanks for the comment.

[@Ron_Rhodes]

I'll have to make one of these. I'll try to hook up that 4th row of pins on the esp32, glad you found that snappable breadboard, just what I've been looking for. I guess I'll be making another order from Amazon now. I find soldering relaxing, I don't usually add extra rosin flux, but I do have an old flux pen from Radio Shack from when I worked there in the '80s. I had some solder that refused to melt, and then I realized I was using bare silver wire.

[@ResinChemTech]

I've already found this breakout board to be handy. And yeah... I do like the Electrocookie board with the 3 hole segments as most other options do result in limiting the number of pins on each side of the ESP32 mini to only on row. I've done other wonky workarounds, like mounting the ESP32 on socket headers then running direct wire to the other row, but the particular board I used here does allow for additional pins to be used... but also can limit the number of solder bridges you need to create. As always, thanks for watching.. and the comment!

[@GFY_FOAD]

Great Video - will have to add this to my stack of other BOB's -

[@ResinChemTech]

Thanks! As I mentioned, this could easily be customized for a lot of different scenarios, but I simply based mine on the most common layout I use for the majority of my builds. Thanks for the comment... and thanks for watching!

[@kennethbrock7511]

Hello. I'm new to leds . I've followed you and decided to try some of your projects. My confusing is with the ESP32 board. For some reason I can't display the entire strip of the WS2812B strip light. I only get 30 light and can't change them. I'd like to change colors or blink them. My setup is simple. An ESP32 board. Pins are voltage and ground and D4 for data. I can connect to wled via my PC and wifi. My power supply is 12v AC100-240v to DC12V10max 120W. I've use a 5V USB and also the power supply but the results the same. I don't think the light is the problem because I can light 30 of them. I've changed the default on the app to 20 for testing tried 300. I've changed the data gio value from to 4, 2, and 16. I moved the pins as needed. When I moved the pin to 2 there was a pop and some smoke. So I'm totally confused on this. But I refuse to give up. I want my stairs to light up and turn off as your video indicated. Any help is appreciated..

[@ResinChemTech]

By default, WLED is configured for only 30 LEDs. If you have a different number, you have to tell WLED how many total LEDs are in your strip. In WLED, go to config from the top menu, then LED Preferences. You will find a section called LED Outputs under the Hardware Setup section. There is an entry for the 'Start' and 'Length' of your LED strip. The first segment/strip will always start with "0", but you should then enter in the total number of LEDs for the Length. When you make those changes and save the config, all of your LEDs should light up. Let me know if this is not the case for you.

[@kennethbrock7511]

@@ResinChemTech Thank you for the reply. Unfortunately this is not working. I changed to a different board (flashed new) and new strip. the only LED that responds is the first one on the strip. If I connect to Data pin 2 the board has a flashing white light, and I heard a pop and saw smoke around one of the LED's that's why I changed to a new board and light. If I select pin 4 or 16 there is no smoke but only the first led lights. When I select Power the first led is the only one that turns off, when I re-select power it blinks. It will blink according the the effects I select. I'm hard pressed to believe I have 2 bad strip lights or bad boards. My understand is the EP32 is newer and has more functions available. I really don't want to buy a different model. This makes no sense to me. That's enough of me whining. I really don't know what else to try. Very frustrated at this point.

[@wrbrower]

Don’t tape. Burn your finger tips like I do. 👆🔥

[@TheUnofficialMaker]

make a pcbway pcb of it.

[@ResinChemTech]

Yes... I talk about that at the end of the video. I've made custom PCBs before, but in this case I don't need a minimum order quantity of five... and I'd still have to solder on all the components (or pay extra for the parts and service). I've even used this design as a guide for a PCB layout. But I did this as a one-off... and since I only need one that only cost me a couple of dollars, ordering and paying for five PCBs when I only need one breakout board really doesn't make sense for me. But you could certainly design, order and pay for a custom PCB and then solder all the pin headers and other components on yourself it that's what you prefer to do.