Ham Radio Universal Prototyping System

Now i mostly work in SMD and design board for things I would like to test. But i do have a lot of through hole parts still that are sitting there pretty much doing nothing, so I started thinking of ways I can use them up and I think I have a solution. Anyway, I have a whole bunch of ideas I would like to try, different circuits to built, test and assemble into working transceivers. Back in the day, which day, ummm, ye olden day LOL, hams would breadboard circuits using actual breadboards. My idea here borrows on that concept and brings it into the modern age.

Starting with the baseboard, rather than mums old chopping board we have a PCB that has 2 power rails for 12 and 5v, a bunch of bypass caps, a DC barrel jack for power input and a 5V regulator. Lets face it, most of what we do only has 2 power rails and those are the most common. Along the baseboard we have 2 rows of dual 10pin headers for our plugin modules to slot in and out of. Each header has 2 power, 2 ground and 6 unused pins for moving signals between the plugin board. Making for neat and tidy wiring.

The prototyping module boards connect to the baseboard with right angle header pins. Either dual or single row header pins can be used, I used single row so i can easily wire stages to the header pins for routing between board on the baseboard.

The tops of each board can be locked together using brass standoffs. This makes for a modular system you can plug and play, mix and match different circuits for testing and characterization.

The backside of each module board contains grounds top and bottom as well as power buses on each side to make veroboard type prototyping nice and simple. This system should allow for quite interesting builds to be achieved  one stage at a time.

DOWNLOAD: Baseboard_gerber

DOWNLOAD: ProtoBoard_gerber