Welcome!

So hopefully you've got one of these wonderful kits in front of you! (If not, you can buy one from the Boldport shop.) This kit is meant for practicing engineers, so we assume that you know how to solder and that you have some solder and a soldering iron handy.

Oh, the board in this kit is open source hardware. If you'd like to make one for yourself, or customise it, the source is here. Go crazy.

SPOILER ALERT! The following may ruin your fun of discovery by telling you too much about how to do things!

Prepare the sponge (optional)

The kit comes with two compressed cellulose sponges that expand to about 10 mm and fit snuggly in the tin can when wet. Tear one of the sponges using the perforations, dunk, squeeze and fit it in the can. The engraved brown makings should now be gone. Now use the tin and sponge to clean your iron as you solder the kit ;)

Cut the components to size and solder them into place

Use the small guide that's included in the kit to identify where the included components go. Here are their specs and where they came from:

One way to cut the leads to size is by placing it in position and use cutters to cut the lead right at the back of the through-hole. Then apply a bit of solder -- be carful not to short out the exposed ground on the bottom side. Make sure you get the polarity of the LED and the right terminals of the FET correctly -- when in doubt, consult the datasheets linked above.

Of course you can use other components and values, and there are spare slots for that. There are even SMD footprints that can take several size of components that you can use. Feel free to patch the circuits to do other things!

Solder the solder

The wiggly slot at the top of the board is for a piece of solder -- for emergencies! -- and is part of the circuit, so is essential. Cut a 1 mm or smaller diameter solder slightly longer than the slot and solder it into place.

Activate!

Once all components are in place, apply 5 V to the positive terminal and ground to the negative terminal and the yellow LED should light up! (If it doesn't check your connections.)

Show off (optional)

At the next party, whip out this little board and prove to all that you were born ready! Or wear it as a necklace to work to show everyone who's got their act together :P

Keep in touch (optional)

We'd love to hear about your experiences with our kit, and how it can be improved. Please keep in touch!

http://boldport.com

http://twitter.com/boldport

https://www.youtube.com/user/boldport