I’ve always wanted to know how to build little electronic things.

When we were kids, my brother built a robot. I thought it was the coolest thing ever (I still think it’s pretty rad that he did it). That’s the kind of thing I always wanted to do, but for some reason never did. Until now that is…

A month or so back I noticed a slashdot story about a digg button kit. Basically, it’s a little circuit board with an LED display and a button. When you press the button, it increments the three digit display counter by 1. So it can count from 0 to 999. I knew I had to have one. Not only because it was awesome, but because it was something I could finally do to move me along the path to finally building that robot.

Earlier this week I got the kit in the mail, and I must admit I was a little disappointed at the size of it. I was expecting it to be about 4x larger than it actually was.

Last night I went to Radio Shack and got all of the stuff that the site said I would need to build it, and then I came home and built it while I watched The Biggest Loser.

Some thoughts… I’ll make a “top ten things to know” list:

1. It was way way easier than I thought it would be.

2. I didn’t have good lighting. You should really get good lighting. This was the most difficult thing about the whole project.

3. The equipment was surprisingly cheap.

4. The “Third Hand and Soldering Iron Holder” was the most essential piece of equipment (other than the soldering iron itself). Tape is also almost crucial in this too…

5. I never even opened the Multimeter and have no idea why I was told to buy it.

6. Solder melts and hardens extremely quickly. We are talking like .1 of a second to change states. As soon as you touch it to the iron, it melts. As soon as you remove the iron it hardens. This means sometimes you will end up with the roll of solder literally soldered to the board and have to use the iron to remelt it.

7. No, you aren’t melting the board. It’s going to be ok. Even if the board is turning brown around the component you are soldering and you are sure you just have to be ruining the whole thing, it’s probably ok.

8. You will need the needle nose pliers to hold the battery thingy while you sloppily attempt (unsuccessfully) to solder it perfectly in place. I have no idea if I did this right, and I ended up with these weird little balls of solder. Only the tab on the right ended up with solder between the battery holder and the board.

9. Splurge and get the $5 plastic cover. It makes it so much more refined looking, plus it will stand up on it’s own on your desk. (actually putting the plastic cover onto the board is the hardest part of the whole project though).

10. Make sure to actually wet your sponge (I forgot to wet mine and ended up burning the crap out of it and getting burnt sponge all over my iron, and was too excited to stop and go wet it because I’m a huge dorky nerd).

And now a few questions I wish I had had someone who knew what they were doing there to answer at the time:

1. Is this enough solder? Too much?

2. Just how durable is this board? How long would it take to ruin it by touching the iron to it? Where can I touch the iron to it and not ruin it? Is it ok if the solder drips on the board somehow and not just on the exposed metal or whatever the silver stuff on the board that I’m soldering to is?

3. Did I do this battery thing right? It doesn’t seem like it would stay, but I have no idea. I have neat little balls of solder and on the pictures on the site it looks like they smeared it around… Did they? Should I have? Or were they just messy?

4. How close can you clip to the board and not mess it up?

5. Is the smoke from the solder poisonous? How careful should I be not to breath it in?

One thing I wish that the package had come with was a detailed explanation of what everything is, what it does, and why I’m doing what I’m doing. It was sort of just like advanced magic legos. I know I did it, but I have no idea why it worked. It did give me a little push towards finally building that robot, but since I don’t understand the magic behind it, it just gives me a small amount of confidence in my soldering abilities rather than any actual real understanding about circuit boards.

The main thing I want to know is, can I make one of these little controller chip things? How do I get started? I suppose it has inspired me to ask these questions though, and I think that was it’s goal. All in all, I had a lot of fun. Thanks Adafruit!

Total time to complete project: About 90 minutes (was watching tv and getting up on commercials to go and look at the instructions on my computer in the other room to confirm I wasn’t ruining everything).

I highly recommend it. If any of my nerdy friends wants to make their own, just order a kit from the site and come on over. I’ve got the tools and the solder, so it will only cost you $18 (with S&H) instead of $75 (for all the equipment).

I’m going to put mine on my cubicle and make people press it every time they ask me for advice/help. This has also inspired me to make a score board (with two counters and buttons) for the “Duck V World” game in my office. Right now we are really low tech and just write the score on a whiteboard. It only increments by one per day though, so this sort of thing would be perfect for it.