Extremely Organized Prototyping

We’ve got a couple of very high-tech shoe boxes in which we store our prototyping accessories. You’ll find a collection of LCD modules, chips on breakout boards, switches soldered to homemade boards for easy breadboarding, and much more. That is assuming you can find anything in that mess of components.

[Shahriar] took a different approach. He’s mounted all of his prototyping gear inside of a briefcase. This large collection of high-end boards include PIC prototyping, various LCD screens, and a large portion of SparkFun’s stocked boards. It’s much more advanced than the Arduino to-go platform, and you can see a full walk through of the system after the break.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw9w8wbnYNE]

Short overview

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKyCSCaQ3tQ]

Full monte

55 thoughts on “Extremely Organized Prototyping

  1. This is a very interesting project and I have to say the comments left me lost for words. As a hobbyist and a professional, I do see value in this set up. I think that the point of this project has been lost on some and as well as the spirit of Hackaday. Dev boards need not be molested in order to demonstrate a software ability. For example, the XBMC port to ARM. This project has a unique ability to allow cross platform communication via software. I would love to see a zigbee to bluetooth repeater; something that will allow mobile phones/devices to display sensor information and zigbee network info. These cases would allow a developer to make software libraries effectively with those technologies. These would go great in the classroom and encourage others to go embedded.

  2. if i was security and i saw someone walking by with those things, at first id think it has a bomb,and when he opened it, it think it was a digital bomb (read: plane virus), so id arrest him anyway.

  3. One suggestion I might make (though this might take up too much room) is to add a master board for controlling the connections in other boards. I’m not great at electronics, so I’m thinking relays or FPGAs. However, the upside of having a dedicated board just for hooking up jumpers automatically is that you can determine how to hook up your pins and then do so during the programming phase — and have the pinout changes be uploaded along with any changes to the code when saving. You don’t even need to touch the boards.

    That might not sit right with EE types, though. I’m more into software, so my embedded screwups are usually due to miswiring or poor contacts rather than due to programming errors; consequently, I trust connections better when they are made by my code than by my hands.

    I like this idea, by the way. I’d build something like this myself, if I had the cash.

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