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In this return to soldering, we were given a parts kit consisting of a PCB and components and were told to solder it together into a spectrum analyzer, shown completed on the right. This project required good attention to the instructions for tips, as well as good dexterity when soldering to not making any bridges.
IMG_0220.MOVTo start off the soldering, I followed the printed instructions which said to ensure that i had all of the parts. The part list is in the center, with another version of it close by
The picture just left of this shows one of the problems I encountered with this project, as the manual was in Chinese with bad English translations, and the video we were meant to follow along with was entirely in Chinese with no captions
I then got started soldering the resistors, which were pretty easy to solder due to their large size and them being through hole. The manufacturer included one extra resistor of every size.
After the resistors, I soldered the capacitors which were also pretty easy, but then had to do the hardest part of this projects, the LEDs. there were 132 total, split into 12 rows of 11. To complicate things, only every third row had the same color. The hardest part of this was flipping over the board without having the LED's fall out. I tried holding it on, or doing it one at a time, but then discovered the easiest way to do it, which was to use tape to hold the LED's down. Using that method, I was able to do all of the LED's while only coming in after school once.
After completing all of the LED's I soldered on the rest of the componets, which included the chip holders, microphones, USB, and capacitor. The good thing was they all followed the same pattern as the LED's, in that the longer leg would be positive like for the capacitor and microphone.
Below is what it looks like with differing levels of volume going into it. One problem that I could not fix was the red LED on the top left stayed on no matter what I did, and it was not bridged so I have no clue why it was on at all times
After finishing the soldering, I started to make the case for it. The case was made of acrylic, but had some cardboard like liner on it that was really hard to peel off, I found the easiest way to peel it off was with tweezers, but it still took a lot of time to peel it all off. After peeling all of the pieces, I assembled the game but lost two of the bolts in the process, so I just used clear acrylic glue there instead.
In the end, this project allowed me to practice large scale soldering with through hole components, as well as taught me a better way to solder on through hole components using tape to hold them down, and got my soldering faster than ever before by the end of it. Also, through preparing for this, I got reminded of what side is positive and negative on an LED, also meaning the anode and the cathode, and also how to solder IC's so that they have the right direction using markings on them.
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