I often find myself doing some counting when trying to figure out which pin of my ATMega168 is in which row on my bread board. I ended up printing a little label using Excel, double-sided tape and my printer. The label sits right on top of the chip and makes it easy to know which pin is where.

Is this a no-no due to risk of putting paper on the circuit leading to a small fire? It's only on my prototyping breadboard so I'm not worried. But as a general question I was wondering if other folks do this.

Thanks.

I doubt the chip would generate enough heat to light the paper. It also would not really have any effect on the chip either.

It's a novel idea that can certainly help in learning the ins and outs (pun intended) of these magical little gadgets.

Yes, definitely helping make things easier for me. Glad to hear it's not a big safety issue. If anyone is interested I can post my Excel settings (fonts, row/column heights, etc) used to print the labels.

Yeah vladarino, please post your Excel sheet or at least the settings. I like the idea!!

Ralph

Here you go:

Excel file

Picture: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6MWgGjpybUaNXVXTlZSTnNKcEE/edit?pli=1

The second sheet of the Excel file is a register summary that I keep around. I have a version where I wrote notes on some of the bits and registers for quick reference. Maybe other folks have something similar they use as a cheat sheet for the mcu data sheet. Maybe we can collaborate.

Thanks vladarino,

I would need to label pin 27 SDA and pin 28 SLA with maybe a color bar, I can never remember which pin is which for I2C pinout.

Of course pins 16 (SS), 17 (MOSI), 18 (MISO), and 19 (SCK) would be nice to have highlighted!

I like the idea, I hope I get around to using it.

Of course this would make a nice article in the Nerdkits Community Library

I like the picture, I do not know if google docs allows one to use a link so that you could have put the picture inline in the thread.

Ralph