After exploring a number of options, I’m settling on foam board as the basis for my future Jee Labs demo projects. So here come the Projects On Foam – POF‘s!

What’s a POF? Well… I start with two JeePlugs and solder some headers onto them, as follows:

Then I take an A5-sized (148×210 mm) piece of 5 mm foam board / foam core:

… and glue those two plugs onto it using sticky tape or hot glue, pins up:

Last step is an optional battery holder and some rubber feet on the back side:

And there you go, the basis for an endless variety of Projects On Foam:

Just by sticking stuff together. Here’s an example:

I’ll probably fix one or two mini-breadboards onto the board as well.

The end result is modular, reusable, light, cheap, and sturdy enough to pick up and move around. It’s not meant for permanent setups, the whole idea is really to “doodle” with nodes and plugs in this way until everything works, and then to take it all apart and either rebuild the whole circuit from scratch with all the individual components, or to place these boards and plugs inside a more permanent enclosure.

Here’s another trial, with a cutout for the LCD to make it stick in place a bit better:

(apologies for the flash lighting)

As you can see, by adding a sheet of paper between the board and the different components, everything can be labeled and annotated.

I still need to fool around with this approach a bit more, but so far so good – it would be easy to make templates as PDF’s so others can replicate these Jee Labs projects more easily.

If there is any interest in this, I can make foam boards and other doodahs available via the shop. There’s really nothing to it.

Update – POFs now have their own section in the wiki.