Threadboard Constellation

In this instructable I will show you how to make a Threadboard Constellation using a basic electrical circuit.

For this project, I used an Adafruit Circuit Playground, a breadboard, conductive wires, LED's, a battery, magnets, and a small amount of felt.

For the first step you want to put your Adafruit Circuit Playground in the center of the breadboard and secure it to the breadboard using magnets. The next step in assembly is to splay the legs of the LED's and put the longer leg facing towards the outer edge of the breadboard.

In this next step you want to arrange the LED's so that the shorter leg facing towards the Adafruit Circuit Playground will be able to touch the wire that we will connect to our ground bus. You also want the longer leg of the LED to be able to touch the wire that we will connect to our power bus. I had to rearrange my LED's to accomplish this. In addition to that, I had to use a small piece of felt to cover the ground wire so that my power wire could connect to power on the circuit board without touching the ground wire. Place the wire that will serve as our ground bus in a circle around the board with one end of the wire touching the circle on the board labeled GND (this is where a magnet should be securing the board and the wire can sit on top of the magnet). This is the place where the potential energy of the electrons is zero. You must also make sure that each inner leg of the LED's touches this wire. Next, you will want to place the wire that will serve as our power bus in an outer circle so that each leg of LED's facing outwards touches the wire. You will need to make sure that one end of the wire connects to the circle on the board labeled 3.3V (this is where one magnet should be securing the board and the wire can sit on top of the magnet just like our ground bus). You can use a small piece of felt to prevent the wires from touching if needed.

Lastly, plug in your battery to the circuit board. Provided there is enough power in the battery to light all of the LED's they should illuminate!

This is a simple schematic that describes each element of the Threadboard Constellation and where things should be placed on the breadboard.