My trusty old Aoyue digital soldering device has seen better days…
I’m putting together a wine cork decoration for Katie. It turns out that a Dremel with a cutting head is the easiest way to bisect corks. It also turns out that cutting seventy corks makes a ton of cork-dust. Corks.
This stuff is everywhere…my soldering area is hardest hit. I’m not sure whether the more appropriate clean-up tool is my shop vac or leaf blower. Who am I kidding…definitely going leaf blower.
Some career-oriented things have kept me largely out of the Bad Lab. I finally decided to dust of the soldering station and get a permanent power connector surface mounted to my IOIO board.
I tackled this project before I headed to work…I think the pre-coffee pre-jitter scenario worked out well. Anyhow, this is the component from SparkFun:
It is a simple two pin surface mount compact connector. Nice current rating, so I am hoping it will give me enough juice to pull 5V in my pull-up project.
The issue to overcome in the actual soldering was keeping this little sucker in place and stable to get the first joint in place. My solution, once again, ended up involving my adjustable clamps. These things are great, especially compared to the ‘helper hands’ alligator clip stand. Wonky hands would be more apt.
For a little connector, it seems to be fairly secure. I also picked up a barrel jack to two pin connector from SparkFun.
Hooked up to a wall wart…survey says:
We have power. I will test it against some loads, and get back on the pull-up project. Here goes nothing…
Since I’m really dragging my feet in regards to posting anything of substance, take a quick look at my new Aoyue soldering station.
It works like a champ…pretty pumped that I heeded Lady Ada’s advice on this one.
I still need to post my Motor Shield assembly pics. I also really need to post some stuff about the Droid 2…which is constantly blowing my mind. Stick around…it’ll happen.
Sweep is for breakfast around here…implement a knob or be gone.
Same principle as the Arduino sweep example from yesterday, but with a potentiometer doing the actual lifting. Lifting? Shifting…heavy shifting. I added a little potentiometer (little blue guy behind the RainBird sprinkler adjustment tool) to control the servo this go-around:
Another success.
Maybe I’ll knock it out of the park. Life is a garden, dig it.
My source for the Arduino Motor Shield would not approve of my soldering iron. Not by any means…
I still have the ‘made in china’ tag on this piece of shit. Poorly played.
In case any of my reader-base has taken an interest in microcontrollers, robotics, or awesome crap in general, Lady Ada has you covered. I recieved my motor shield in no time what-so-ever, and Limor’s prices smoke those of Amazon to boot. Don’t get me started about her tutorials…pretty bad ass.
I need to toss the pictured iron in the trash and get a real iron before I get after my motor shield project…I can say that the servos she shipped me are tits.
I splurged on a motor shield from Lady Ada for my Arduino antics.
Here it is..
“Some Assembly Required” Sonofabitch. I guess my soldering skills are going to be put to the test. Stay tuned.
