No we are not going to try and bypass Schmart technology, we are going to talk about bypassing supply lines on your SchmartBoard!
Before I first used a Schmart board I looked at the PDF file for the one I had chosen ( 201-0006-01 ) and thought, "hmmm, if this is all there is then we could have some supply bypassing issues!" - because it sure looks like a long way from a pin, out to the pin pads, then up to the 0603 component areas, then to GND. But the day came when the boards turned up and I got to look at the back side as well. And in fact the Schmart people have been rather clever and given us an easy way to not only add bypass capacitors, but also to tie pins to GND.
Look at this photo of the underside of my board. What you can see is that the innermost pad associated with each pin has a matching pad on the ground plane, just the right spacing for an 0603 component. The little blue 'specks' on this board are in fact 0603 zer-ohm jumper resistors. On one or two pins you will also see black blobs, which are either 100nF or 1uF bypass capacitors on the appropriate pins. The wire linkages are done with some Solder-Eze or similar enamlled wire which I have been using for many years.
For some time before finding the Schmart technology I was using a variety of SMD adaptor boards with more conventional DIP style prototyping PCB's. For some things I would go straight to a custom PCB because the prototyping process just wasn't suitable. But now for many jobs I can eschew the $100 prototype PCB and work things out on the Schmart board with many fewer hassles - with much greater speed and significantly lower cost.
