Breadboards are the very first tool that you will use during any prototyping project and virtually every prototype will use the breadboard at one time. Breadboards can turn into a rat’s nest of wires that overlap and are hard to trace, making it challenging to design an precise schematic when it comes time to make your PCB. To simplify your life, Nick Bild came up with a software that analyses the breadboard’s physical layout to generate an automatic KiCAD-like schematic.
The breadboard is at its heart it is a collection of connectors. The goal of this script is to recognize every connection and link it to the pin that is associated with it on the component. It does this by using a specific breadboard with each row of pins linked to the Arduino Dueboard I/O pin. An Python software running from a PC is then able to check every row to ensure continuity. The user will then input the component at the connection to create an KiCAD schematic that includes wires between each component’s pins.
The script does have important limitations. One of the most obvious is that a lot of ICs are either not equipped with internal continuity on every pin or have only internal continuity only in certain states. To fix this issue it is necessary to insert jumpers to replace certain components. Also, the user has to input the component for each connectionsince the script isn’t capable to recognize components -it just examines continuity. However, even with these limitations, Schematico-matic could save you lots work and time when you design diagrams for more complex breadboard circuits.
