Donald asked 3 months ago
Hello,
I want to start putting some projects onto permanent perf boards. One project I have is a WiFi strength monitor. I have a number of the popular breadboard power supply boards 
These are quite bulky for what I want. I really just want the option to attach a 9V battery via the barrel connector, I don’t need a 3″ wide thing that has a USB connection port.
Is there such a board?
Sara Santos Staff answered 3 months ago
Hi.
I found this if you just want USB: https://www.ebay.com/itm/MicroUSB-breadboard-5V-Power-Supply-module-Micro-USB-SP/264392634326
I found this smaller board with just the barrel jack: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Breadboard-Power-Supply-Module-PSU-12V-5V-3-3V-Dual-Output/133124571919
There’s also this module (but it doesn’t convert 9V to 5V or 3.3V): https://www.ebay.com/itm/5Pcs-5-5mmx-2-1mm-dc-jack-socket-plug-power-supply-modGK/402645083890
I don’t have experience with these modules, so I’m not sure if these work well.
If anyone could share their experience with this kind of modules that would be great.
You can also try writing a post in the facebook group and see if anyone has any more suggestions besides mine: https://www.facebook.com/groups/RandomNerdTutorials/
Regards,
Sara
Donald answered 3 months ago
Sara the second one looks like the ideal form. I’ll hopefully find it available in North America or without a large shipping cost.
I’ve discovered that these common power supply modules do NOT fit perf boards. They’re sized for breadboards and their power rails.
Providing power to portable projects like what I have in mind is more challenging (to me) than the project function itself. Perhaps it would be easier (and cheaper and effective) to just create my own with necessary capacitors, power toggle switch and LED…
Sara Santos Staff answered 3 months ago
Hi Donald.
Yes, sometimes we just need to build ourselves what we are looking for. That’s also a good challenge 🙂
Regards,
Sara
Donald answered 3 months ago
Sara, I just made a working voltage regulator for my project! I used a 7805 linear regulator, 100mF and 2.2mF capacitors to power the ESP32 board and small OLED screen. NOW I can put it all together onto a perfboard and have a nice little portable WiFi monitor! I essentially made what you pictured, below: Thanks to your help from this video and Bill at Drone Bot Workshop!
Sara Santos Staff answered 3 months ago
I’ll mark this issue as resolved. If you need further help, you just need to open a new question in our forum.
Regards,
Sara