Night Hack · Founders, Inc.
One wrong wire, caught before the smoke.
Smart Breadboard lets an AI see your circuit. It finds wiring mistakes before power-on, keeps the power off until the wiring is right, and tells you on your Mac and on your phone.
Live
Build it wrong. Watch it get caught.
simulated loop, no hardware: build, scan, catch the short, fix it, power on, overload, cut
The problem
AI writes the instructions. Nobody checks the wires.
More people build electronics from chatbot instructions every week. A chatbot cannot see the board. One crossed jumper can fry a sensor, or start a fire on a desk.
It cannot see
The model describes a circuit. It has no way to know what you actually plugged in.
You find out late
The first sign of a short is smoke, a hot chip, or a dead USB port.
Beginners pay most
The people who need guidance most are the people least able to spot a bad wire.
How it works
Scan first. Power second.
Two multiplexers watch sixteen rows. One drives a safe test voltage into a row. The other reads every other row. A voltage on another row means the two rows are connected. The whole board maps in a fraction of a second, with the power off.
Scan
The Arduino maps which rows touch. The scan only runs while the power is off, so the test voltage never meets a live circuit.
Compare
The map is checked against the circuit plan. Rails touching, stray links and missing jumpers each get a plain fix: "remove the wire between row 5 and row 6".
Power
Claude calls power_on. It refuses if the check finds a fault. If the check passes, the relay closes and power flows.
Safety
The check decides. Not a guess.
The wiring check is plain code that compares a scan with the circuit plan. The AI reads the result and explains it. It does not decide whether power is allowed.
The check comes first. power_on runs a scan and refuses to switch power on if it finds a short, a stray link or a missing wire.
Power starts off. After a reset, the firmware sets the relay to off before any other code runs.
No scan while live. The multiplexers are disabled before power-on, and the board refuses to scan while power is on.
No remote power-on. You can text "cut the power" from anywhere. You cannot text it back on. That takes you, at the bench, after a clean check.
Hardware
Small parts, one job each.
What you get
Three places to find out.
The notch
A small native app sits on the real notch. It stays invisible until something needs you, then grows downward with the fault and the fix.
MCP tools
check_wiring, power_on, power_off, get_status. Claude can look at your real board before it says "now connect the LED".
iMessage
Text it "is my circuit safe?" or "cut the power". It cannot turn power on: that takes you, at the bench, after a clean check.
Away from the bench
Ask it from anywhere.
example conversation
Built tonight. Nothing existed before kickoff.
Ben, Sebastian, Seyhan and Philip. Night Hack at Founders, Inc., October 30.