Forced to the Ground:

After some debugging, head-scratching and swearing I couldn't find the reason why the enable pin was being held high on the HC595 shift registers when more than two registers were populated on the board. Eventually I gave up and measured the current flowing from the enable to ground, saw that it wasn't too much, and bodged in a 11k pull-down resistor to an adjacent chip's ground and called it good. 

What Next?

I would like to fix / do the following: 

• Revise the schematic and resolve the pull-down issue
• Make the shape of it more breadboard friendly with the display at the top and generally keeping the breadboard more in the center of the design
• Expand it to fill more of a standard breadboad
• include header pins for expansion to multiple breadboards. 

When Will That Happen?

Honestly, I don't know. This project started with me feeling stuck in my workspace because organizing is a chore. Now that I have The Resistorganizer, I have what I want and (selfishly) that's what is important to me at the moment. This was always intended to be a tool rather than something I'd turn into a product for release. Nevertheless, I do want to share my work, so that anyone can take it an build their own or run with it. So, I'll revise the schematic to the best of my ability, but beware, there be bugs. Once I have it in a condition I feel comfortable sharing, I'll put them in this .io project. 

THANK YOU!

This is my first project on Hackaday.io and I want to express how rad I think this community is and say thanks to all who provided insight and encouragement. I learned a lot from this project and a lot of that came from you. Cheers.