New Jarduino build gets started

[daplatapus]

Originally Posted by pinhead

Are you trying to mount the drivers on the Protoboard?

Lol, I will be if I can ever get my hands on some drivers, haha. Yeah, I saw all those drawings being open source on RC, but I had already gotten a hold of a guy there and he sent me some of the 4 driver boards. They're still in the snail mail along with almost all my other parts and pieces.

Nice going with winning a fixture, totally cool! But alas, no winning for me. I'm really looking forward to this build though. Something to be said about being able to say you built something yourself. Hopefully it works

[daplatapus]

Well got some parts in today. My TFT LCD touch screen and the RTC MEGA shield.

[Skimmerking]

ah dude that is so easy solder here and there touch some of the jiggy here and some of the jiggy there and pouf you have smoke. lol

seriously well done man I wouoldnt know where to start.

[daplatapus]

LOL, I'm not sure I do either, haha, but I'm figuring it out

And you're right, with a good soldering iron, it is very easy to solder these boards up. This is how the Real Time Clock and ITDB02 MEGA shield comes comes:


and this is what it looks like after about 3 hours of soldering:


Actually it wouldn't have taken 3 hours except, see that tiny little chip to the left of the teeny little silver cylinder? I soldered it on backwards and had to unsolder it (much more difficult than it sounds) clean up all the solder pads and re-do it. I actually don't know if there is a right way or wrong way to put it on, but there is a teeny weeny little dimple on one corner and one of the photo's I found on the net of another guy who built the same thing had the dimple in the opposite corner that I did. Logically I just assumed I was the one between us that got it wrong

And the back:

[ScubaSteve]

Looks pretty pro, Dom! How much fun did you have bending all those resistors And yes, there is a right way and a wrong way to solder on that chip. It's lessons like these that teach you how valuable braided copper solder wick is. It's like an eraser for soldering

[daplatapus]

Hmmm, braided copper solder wick, good to know. I had a devil of a time trying to get that sucker off there. I kept trying to tell myself, "well at least you know your soldering is good!"
Do you just use any stranded copper wire (I'm assuming prepped with flux) or is there a specific product you get? I do have a desoldering pump, but go figure, I only remembered it after I'd finished.

[ScubaSteve]

Originally Posted by daplatapus

Hmmm, braided copper solder wick, good to know. I had a devil of a time trying to get that sucker off there. I kept trying to tell myself, "well at least you know your soldering is good!"
Do you just use any stranded copper wire (I'm assuming prepped with flux) or is there a specific product you get? I do have a desoldering pump, but go figure, I only remembered it after I'd finished.

Looks like this:



It's also called desoldering braid. Desoldering pumps work kinda "meh". The braid works like a sponge and sucks it up real quick. It's way less cumbersome and fussy than than the pumps. The day I discovered this stuff I tossed my desoldering pump in the bin (actually it was first disassembled for useful parts, then binned).

[gregzz4]

The solder wick comes on a roll
It looks similar to braided ground straps on older cars
Very handy to have on hand, but I've always got by with a solder pump

Nice work so far

Edit: I'm too slow