Raspberry Pi Forums

I'm new with the pi. During prototyping, could I give continuous power to my cheap breadboard that I got from Sintron on e-bay? I can't seem to find info about how many milliamps these small breadboards can take without cooking. I found an old Ryobi charger in the cupboard that says 6V 350mA, plugged it in and took voltage and amperage readings from the end of the power pack cable (after attaching a power socket that I ripped out of an old modem). The volts and amps were 9.5V and 1.6A respectively, which is way higher amps than spec! I just haven't received my 4x AA battery power pack in the post yet and it would be annoying to charge those batteries all the time anyway. Would somebody know a good power pack to connect to a breadboard for continuous power, if that is even advisable? Thanks.

The 9.5v is with no load? How did you measure the Amps?

Yes, 9.5 V with no load. I used a multimeter to measure the amps by connecting each of the wires to the pos and neg wires coming from the power pack.

Ouch, you short circuited the power supply through your meter.

permapsy wrote:Yes, 9.5 V with no load. I used a multimeter to measure the amps by connecting each of the wires to the pos and neg wires coming from the power pack.

You can't measure current like that! With most common meters, current must be measured in series with a load. The power supply probably went into overload shutdown which is probably what saved your meter from destruction. Did your meter leads get hot?

Oh ya duh I forgot about putting a load on it. Anyway, my questions remains. What is a good breadboard power supply?

I have a couple of these for general use http://www.modmypi.com/electronics/brea ... supply-kit as well as a much bigger variable one