Inspiration
After participating in remote university labs, we felt fortunate that we had access to lab materials. We understand that not everybody is able to access lab materials at home. Our hope was that EZBreadboard would help bridge this gap.
What it does
EZBreadboard allows users to enter circuit elements of their circuit, then see those elements represented in a 3D space in a breadboard. The circuit created on the 3D breadboard is functional and gives the user a better visual example of how the circuit will look like in real life versus a 2D circuit diagram.
How we built it
To create EZBreadboard, we used Unity 3D. The first part of the program which allows the user to specify which circuit elements they want to be on their breadboard was created using 2D UI elements in Unity. This UI uses C# scripting to give functionality to the UI buttons. The second part of the program uses 3D models to represent each circuit element and the breadboard. These models were created in Blender and imported over into Unity. These models are instantiated into the scene using C# scripting.
Challenges we ran into
The Unity 3D environment is difficult to picture. When trying to first migrate the models from Blender into something that we could control using C#, we found that lots of tedious fine-tuning were required to ensure that everything was scaled, placed, and oriented correctly.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud that we were able to accomplish our goal of converting a list of circuit elements into a 3D representation of the circuit. We are also proud that our team was able to learn new skills during the Hackathon and successfully implement them into the project.
What we learned
Having big plans is a good thing, as long as you identify an MVP. Your big plans will help boost your creativity and think of better ways to address your audience's needs.
What's next for EZBreadboard
Our next goals include improving upon our original prototype for visually building the circuit, as well as adding multimeter support and variable voltage sources. We believe that intractability is key to the future of EZBreadboard and we would like to see our program be equipped with all of the necessary tools an electrical engineering student needs for circuit construction and analysis.
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