Of breadboard simulator

Was trying to wire up my tsunami alert system for my D1 project for EE2006, but realized it's almost impossible to do it without planning the breadboard. So a quick search in the net landed me on this breadboard simulator. However, after trying it out for a while, i realized the simulator's breadboard is slightly smaller than our breadboard. Hence, i decided not to use it.

So I tried drawing it out on a graph paper. It was also a futile attempt as I got frustrated when i had to correct a mistake and had to rub the lines out and made a mess out of it.

Then, I thought of using excel. By making use of the cells, I divided the excel worksheet into the required number of "holes" in the breadboard, representing each in one box and coloring them in light green. White portions then represented the empty spaces within the breadboard. Vcc is coded red, ground is black and clock pulse is pink. The chips are colored dark grey and other components like the resistors and capacitors are given light grey. The rest of the colors represent the rest of the wires to interconnect the different input/output of the chips. Cells for a single wire are then merged up to ensure that overlapping of wires are disallowed.

So yup, with all the rules I set for my breadboard planner, I went ahead to plan my breadboard. And surprise surprise, I managed to do it!! Woah, I was quite amazed with myself when I finally somehow managed to plan it out nicely. Heh.

Now its time for the most difficult part: the real wiring.