Building a Custom 7-Segment LED Name Badge

Drew, aka pdp7, built this great 7-segment LED name badge.  He had originally intended on making it for the Maker Faire Bay Area, but wasn’t able to get it done in time.  Thankfully, he finished the project in time for the Ann Arbor Mini Maker Faire.  He built the whole badge on a couple Adafruit Perma-Proto Boards.

Read more about the project here, including details on how to build your own.

This proto-board is the PCB you always wish you had, but never realized it! We took the basic layout of a half-sized breadboard and turned that into a beautiful PCB. The top side has a white silkscreen, and the same markings you’re familiar with, to make transferring components easy. The bottom has the 5-hole pad design that matches a classic breadboard, with 4 power bus lines on the sides, and no mask so you can easily cut traces when necessary. We used 1.2mm diameter drill holes so even parts with big leads will fit. All holes are thru-plated for strength – these wont peel off with rework. The finish is a gold plate – you won’t get oxidation like with bare copper perf! There are also two mounting holes so you can attach the PCB to your project box. They’ll also fit nicely in an Altoids-sized mint tin

These are so handy, we decided to put them in a pack of 3. Once you use a Perma-Proto board, you’ll never go back!

In stock and Shipping Now!


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2 Comments

  1. wow that perfboard is cool. Once again adafruit came out with something I need that I didn’t know I needed!

  2. woah, catching up on my blog reading and was like – oh, that’s me! 🙂 thanks for inventing the perma-protos, adafruit. I was kicking myself for not ordering the full pack as I needed the quarter sized last week for a e-paper name badge and had to settle for radioshack perfboard.

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