# Stripboard to Schematic to Breadboard. Good/Bad?



## BuddytheReow (Sep 8, 2021)

There are a TON of stripboard/veroboard layouts out there for PedalPCB and non-PedalPCB circuits. I am wondering what all you guys think about finding a stripboard layout out there, converting it to a schematic (a great skill I still need to hone), and then transferring that to a breadboard. I know my focus recently has been less soldering and more breadboarding, but I think that would be a great idea if people are interested.

So, good idea? Bad idea? Waste of time on this forum? Just curious how I can contribute here.


----------



## vigilante398 (Sep 8, 2021)

Being able to read and write schematics is somewhat like its own language and an important skill for sure. That being said I'm not sure how particularly useful this is, since most vero layouts start as a schematic, and many places post them with the schematic. So if there's a vero layout out there, chances are it won't be hard to find a schematic too.

Reading through a schematic while looking at a vero layout could be somewhat useful I suppose, looking at how things are connected in an attempt to understand how they work, but tracing a schematic from a vero layout with the end goal of breadboarding it doesn't seem to be super useful in my opinion, not sure what you would be learning from the process.


----------



## BuddytheReow (Sep 8, 2021)

Hmm. Good point. Sometimes there are stripboard layouts out there without a schematic and traced from a pedal. Maybe I’m just grasping at straws here. I do think stripboard or pcb to schematic is very useful. Breadboarding it is solidifying whether or not I want to make my own


----------



## Danbieranowski (Sep 8, 2021)

One skill I'd love to learn is converting schematics to breadboard or PCB. One of these days I'll have timeeeeee.


----------



## Barry (Sep 8, 2021)

Danbieranowski said:


> One skill I'd love to learn is converting schematics to breadboard or PCB. One of these days I'll have timeeeeee.


I got my ProtoBoard almost done, except for  voltage regulators for the 3.3 and 5V, and that resetable fuse, the 3.3 is either out of stock or on a site with a ridiculus minimum


----------



## Danbieranowski (Sep 8, 2021)

Barry said:


> I got my ProtoBoard almost done, except for  voltage regulators for the 3.3 and 5V, and that resetable fuse, the 3.3 is either out of stock or on a site with a ridiculus minimum


Look forward to seeing what you come up with!


----------



## vigilante398 (Sep 8, 2021)

BuddytheReow said:


> Hmm. Good point. Sometimes there are stripboard layouts out there without a schematic and traced from a pedal. Maybe I’m just grasping at straws here. I do think stripboard or pcb to schematic is very useful. Breadboarding it is solidifying whether or not I want to make my own


Maybe I look at the wrong sites, but every stripboard layout I've seen started with a schematic traced from a pedal, I suppose they don't always post the schematic. I know everything from tagboardeffects comes from a schematic, not directly from a PCB. Going straight from tracing a PCB to drawing a vero layout without a schematic in between makes zero sense to me. If you understand it enough to make a vero layout then you clearly understand it enough to draw up a schematic.


----------



## phi1 (Sep 8, 2021)

many of the schematics for tagboard effects come from freestompboxes site, which doesn’t have the images come up in google searches. I’ve traced a few veros to schematic for the same reason.


----------



## fig (Sep 9, 2021)

Barry said:


> I got my ProtoBoard almost done, except for  voltage regulators for the 3.3 and 5V, and that resetable fuse, the 3.3 is either out of stock or on a site with a ridiculus minimum


I'll send you a few of those fuses and the VRs.


----------



## Barry (Sep 9, 2021)

fig said:


> I'll send you a few of those fuses and the VRs.


Well thank you kind sir!


----------



## Feral Feline (Sep 9, 2021)

There are a number of the tagboardeffects blogspot projects that do NOT have a schematic publicly available — 4MS Standard Swash, for but one example:

"_I don't have permission to publish the schematic but the layout matches it._
_Please do not ask for it._"

So even if the layout was done from a schematic, if the schematic is not available to the builder of the vero I see nothing wrong with reverse engineering the vero-layout to create the schematic. This is especially good to do for someone who's not yet familiar with schematics and/or vero, a lot there to be learned by doing so.

The next step to understanding the circuit more fully is to breadboard it with the aim of trying different modifications to the circuit, tailoring it to taste or even hopefully improve upon it fundamentally.

I've come across plenty of vero and perf layouts on various sites where the schematic link is dead or non-existant.


As a tutorial, I think the individual steps have been covered so a tutorial may not be needed; but as a method for independent exploration and learning...

👌 VERO > SCHEMATIC > BREADBOARD 👍 GOOD!


----------



## BuddytheReow (Sep 9, 2021)

Feral Feline said:


> 👌 VERO > SCHEMATIC > BREADBOARD 👍


What about the other way around? I would love to be able to find or create a schematic and transfer that to vero. I tried designing a vero layout for something simple and nearly tore the rest of my hair out. I also tried it with pencil and paper so that probably wasn't the most effective way to do it.


----------



## vigilante398 (Sep 9, 2021)

BuddytheReow said:


> What about the other way around? I would love to be able to find or create a schematic and transfer that to vero. I tried designing a vero layout for something simple and nearly tore the rest of my hair out. I also tried it with pencil and paper so that probably wasn't the most effective way to do it.


Get DIY Layout Creator, hands down the best tool for vero layouts. Free and open source, and created by a longtime DIY community member.

As for the method, it's rather unique and I'm certainly not the right person to give guidance on that. I have an electrical engineering degree and I'm a circuit designer by profession, and I can't do vero layouts. PCB layouts sure, but vero is a different way of thinking, you can't approach it the same way as a PCB.


----------



## benny_profane (Sep 9, 2021)

It definitely takes practice to create a vero layout. There's a pretty good tutorial of the process here, but it does take time to start recognizing and using patterns.


----------



## fig (Sep 9, 2021)

vigilante398 said:


> Get DIY Layout Creator, hands down the best tool for vero layouts. Free and open source, and created by a longtime DIY community member.
> 
> As for the method, it's rather unique and I'm certainly not the right person to give guidance on that. I have an electrical engineering degree and I'm a circuit designer by profession, and I can't do vero layouts. PCB layouts sure, but vero is a different way of thinking, you can't approach it the same way as a PCB.


This seems like a great tool (first impression). I've been looking for something to sim breadboarding. I'm going to give the converter a shot later this evening. 

Thanks for sharing!


----------



## phi1 (Sep 9, 2021)

All good stuff on this thread. I think both directions are good to practice and use. A full project to involve all the skills is:

vero -> schematic -> breadboard
-> tweak/re-design -> new schematic
-> vero -> build


----------



## benny_profane (Sep 9, 2021)

fig said:


> I've been looking for something to sim breadboarding.


If I remember correctly, you can select a breadboard layout in DIYLC (in addition to tagboard, stripboard, protoboard, etc.).


----------



## fig (Sep 9, 2021)

Yes, I saw that. I already started populating one. Odd that the default lead spacings on components do not match the breadboard. There's probably a setting somewhere in there...

....and there it is! a box beside each setting that is labelled "Make Default". Nice!


----------



## Coda (Sep 9, 2021)

I would like to know how to take a schematic and convert it to a vero/perf layout.


----------



## phi1 (Sep 9, 2021)

There’s nothing magic about it, just make all the correct traces connect. The link benny posted is probably the best info out there. Ive used DIYLC mentioned in this thread, usually just plop the ic in the middle of it has that, put input wire on the left side, and start walking through the components on the schematic. getting it to work is not too hard, just takes a while and lots of re-checking. Optimizing the most compact layout is the tricky part, which I don’t feel I’ve mastered.


----------



## BuddytheReow (Sep 9, 2021)

@vigilante398 mentioned DIY Layout Creator above. I just downloaded it and took 20 minutes to play around whipped this up. I'm sure it can be much more compact than this, but not bad for a first time  . This is a LPB-1. I think the more I play with it the better I'll get in terms of density. Just like breadboarding and guitar!


----------



## benny_profane (Sep 9, 2021)

BuddytheReow said:


> @vigilante398 mentioned DIY Layout Creator above. I just downloaded it and took 20 minutes to play around whipped this up. I'm sure it can be much more compact than this, but not bad for a first time  . This is a LPB-1. I think the more I play with it the better I'll get in terms of density. Just like breadboarding and guitar!


Nice work. I'd suggest avoiding standing resistors (if possible) to help with visual inspection. Check out the tagboard layout here and see how they use the resistor pitch to hop over rows. It's definitely a different way of thinking, but it makes sense after making a few layouts.

EDIT: You'll also want to consider adding power filtering and polarity protection. Many stripboard layouts don't include these elements.


----------



## BuddytheReow (Sep 9, 2021)

I agree. I can't stand the standing resistors on a vero layout! Sometimes I can get away with folding a resistor over to make it look like it is flush with the others if I have to jump 3 rows instead of the standard minimum 4.

As for my first layout from DIY Layout Creator, it's just like your kid's first art project: you love it because they made it. Not because it's good


----------



## vigilante398 (Sep 9, 2021)

Looks good, obviously practice makes better and you'll get even faster. I haven't touched DIYLC in a while, but I thought I remembered there being a way to make the resistors "lay down" even on smaller runs. It defaults to making them stand up to a certain length.

But yeah I really like it as a program. Not as powerful as the other CAD software out there, but super intuitive and user-friendly, and gets the job done. Not to mention free!


----------



## BuddytheReow (Sep 9, 2021)

vigilante398 said:


> Not to mention free!


The cheap ass in me loves it!

It took me a good 5 minutes how to navigate around in it. It's pretty user friendly as long as you have a good basic understanding of circuits. I'm having trouble trying to save anything. Maybe that's why it's free?


----------



## benny_profane (Sep 9, 2021)

BuddytheReow said:


> The cheap ass in me loves it!
> 
> It took me a good 5 minutes how to navigate around in it. It's pretty user friendly as long as you have a good basic understanding of circuits. I'm having trouble trying to save anything. Maybe that's why it's free?


That's strange, you should be able to. What problems are you encountering?


----------



## BuddytheReow (Sep 9, 2021)

benny_profane said:


> That's strange, you should be able to. What problems are you encountering?






I have no idea where the log is?


----------



## fig (Sep 9, 2021)

vigilante398 said:


> Looks good, obviously practice makes better and you'll get even faster. I haven't touched DIYLC in a while, but I thought I remembered there being a way to make the resistors "lay down" even on smaller runs. It defaults to making them stand up to a certain length.
> 
> But yeah I really like it as a program. Not as powerful as the other CAD software out there, but super intuitive and user-friendly, and gets the job done. Not to mention free!


If you set the lead spacing to 2.54mm it shrinks the image to fit laying down.


----------



## fig (Sep 9, 2021)

BuddytheReow said:


> View attachment 15856
> 
> I have no idea where the log is?


Are you running it from the disk image?


----------



## BuddytheReow (Sep 9, 2021)

fig said:


> Are you running it from the disk image?


Sorry, I have NO idea what that means?


----------



## fig (Sep 9, 2021)

Have you installed the program, or did you double-click the downloaded file and run the app from there?


----------



## fig (Sep 9, 2021)

I'll add this, as it was downloaded from an "unknown developer", _some_ operating systems require you to grant authorization to run the application, and sometimes for disk-writes, etc. I had to tell MacOS to run the program against it's better judgement. 
Windows 10 isn't as bad a nag.
Unbuntu leaves it up to you.


----------



## BuddytheReow (Sep 9, 2021)

No, I installed the software. Windows defender told me to be careful first, but I know better!


----------



## benny_profane (Sep 9, 2021)

Oh that's very strange. I'm not seeing the issue on the github page. You could submit it there and see if you get a response.









						Issues · bancika/diy-layout-creator
					

multi platform circuit layout and schematic drawing tool - Issues · bancika/diy-layout-creator




					github.com


----------



## BuddytheReow (Sep 9, 2021)

Maybe I just need to create a log folder?


----------



## Feral Feline (Sep 11, 2021)

Storyboardist (Effects Layouts) has a set of correctly-sized components you can download for DIYLC. Makes it easier to figure out whether something is actually going to fit in the real world...

As Vigilante398 said, laying out "vero is a different way of thinking". I haven't practiced it much, because I find it quite frustrating. My brain just doesn't jive with vero very well, and my layouts are either larger than they need to be or long and skinny.

Creating a layout that allows the circuit to work well (no hums/pops/whistles etc), is compact, minimises cuts & jumpers, flows and makes sense... well, that takes some skills indeed.

I mostly use DIYLC for quick-sketching perf and schematic ideas, case in point — as discussed earlier in the thread, the ol' sawasherooniki — there's a vero for it, but no schematic. I've been meaning to do this for some time, but right now is not the time to do it as I'm extremely busy though I squeezed in a few minutes here and there over the last couple/few days, after my previous post whenever that was... it's a very rough first draught, it needs renumbering and spacing and tidying, but I'll throw it out there regardless:






Twelve pots and six switches that often interconnect with one another, and late-in-the-game labelling means it's a mess. Feel free to draw your own cleaner version, and let me know what mistakes I've made in my haste.


----------



## Feral Feline (Sep 11, 2021)

Buddythereow, I've found DIYLC is pretty fussy with how it saves files. I used to get the same error message if I didn't save it the right way. Can't remember what caused it, nor what I did to fix it, but I've no problem saving files.


It doesn't like when you try to save to another folder other than the folder it sets up for all the projects created with it — that much I do recall.
Maybe there's a newer version I should upgrade to, but my Mac is old and set in its ways, just like me.


----------

