Daily Note: Breadboards Integrated into Physical Prototypes

These notes are a summary of concepts presented in “CurveBoards: Integrating Breadboards into Physical Objects to Prototype Function in the Context of Form.”

Junyi Zhu, Lotta-Gili Blumberg, Yunyi Zhu, Martin Nisser, Ethan Levi Carlson, Xin Wen, Kevin Shum, Jessica Ayeley Quaye, and Stefanie Mueller. 2020. CurveBoards: Integrating Breadboards into Physical Objects to Prototype Function in the Context of Form. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376617

  1. Overview of Concept
    • Integrating breadboards into physical objects to preserve appearance and enable circuit fluidity
    • Facilitates component exchanges and repositioning during design iteration
  2. Testing and Iteration
    • Allows testing of interactive scenarios and logging of interaction data
    • Enables changes to component layout and circuit design on the fly
  3. Prototyping Technique
    • Suitable for early-stage interactive device experimentation
  4. Applications
    • Ergonomic component layout
      • Finding efficient layouts for components
    • Component fit
      • Ensuring components fit into the physical prototype
    • Preservation of look and feel
    • Maintaining appearance while iterating on design
    • Prototype functionality
      • Preserving the prototype’s function while testing circuits
    • Component need identification
      • Identifying component requirements based on the prototype’s form factor
  5. Materials Used
    • Rigid non-conductive material
      • Used for housing
    • Deformable conductive material
      • Conductive rubber for channels facilitating component plugging
  6. Prototyping Process
    • 3D printing
      • Used for housing creation and channel formation
    • Conductive silicone
    • Mixed with carbon fiber and silicone for high conductivity
      • Carbon fiber mixed with isopropyl alcohol
      • Silicone (Smooth-On SORTA-Clear 37 Clear) mixed for 5 minutes
      • Carbon-silicone ratio: 5wt%
      • Part B added for curing
  7. Channel Filling Process
    • Silicone is manually filled using a syringe
    • Channels do not drip due to the sticky nature of silicone
    • Curing time: 75 minutes
  8. Pinhole and Channel Specifications
    • Cone of 4mm depth created at each pinhole
    • Minimum channel dimensions: 0.5mm high, 0.6mm wide
    • Pins are tightly packed (2.54mm) and long (6mm)