Kevin Santo Cappuccio Takes the Jumperless Breadboard to the Next Level, Launches the Jumperless V5

Maker Kevin Santo Cappuccio has launched a crowdfunding campaign for the Jumperless V5, a next-generation take on the jumper-free programmable breadboard — now powered by Raspberry Pi's quad-core dual-architecture RP2350B microcontroller and featuring a lot more LEDs.

"Jumperless V5 lets you prototype like a nerdy wizard who can see electricity and conjure jumpers with a magic wand," Cappuccio explains of his creation. "It's an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for hardware, with an analog-by-nature RP2350B-based dev board, a drawer full of wires, and a workbench full of test equipment (including a power supply, a multimeter, an oscilloscope, a function generator, and a logic analyzer) all crammed inside a breadboard."

We reviewed one of Cappuccio's earlier Jumperless models back in June, and found it to be little short of magic: a solderless breadboard that is also wire-free, allowing points to be connected using programmable switches hidden underneath using a connection to the browser-based Wokwi simulator. The Jumperless V5 takes the concepts introduced in this version and expands them considerably — starting with a move to Raspberry Pi's latest RP2350B microcontroller. The probe, originally designed for quickly making connections without having to connect the Jumperless to a host computer, now has a dedicated port and can be used to measure voltage, current and resistance at any point; the general-purpose pins at the upper-left of the board have been swapped out for a clickwheel — part of a new user interface system.

That user interface requires, as most do, a display, and that's where perhaps the biggest upgrade of all is found. Where the earlier Jumperless design could only light up each split row of the breadboard, the Jumperless V5 includes individually-addressable RGB LEDs under each breadboard hole — allowing it to act as a programmable 14×30 display with scrolling text. There's 16MB of on-board flash for storing projects locally, four independent ±8V 300mA power supplies, daisy-chain support for connecting multiple boards, a built-in Python interpreter capable of running apps on-device, and an Arduino Nano header for putting a microcontroller into your projects — reconfigurable if you're using a similar-footprint microcontroller with a different pinout.

"Jumperless V5 can sniff or write any UART, I2C, SPI, or MIDI signals on the board," Cappuccio adds of its enhanced feature set over earlier designs. "It can be set to either print whatever it reads on the breadboard LEDs, turning the Jumperless into a serial monitor, or show up as two USB devices on your computer and give you bidirectional communication through that other port. There is no 'prescribed' use case for this thing. Every design decision was geared toward making it as general purpose as possible while keeping it fun and easy to use. Whether you’re a hobbyist, a musician, a student, a hacker, a scientist, a teacher, an engineer, an artist, or someone who just wants to play Doom on a breadboard, Jumperless was made to give you an entirely new tool for turning your ideas into rad stuff."

The Jumperless is currently funding on Crowd Supply, with the hardware priced at $349 including delivery; devices are expected to begin shipping in mid-February next year.