Gertboard - The Element14 strikes back

Yeah... I had the same reaction as Ray. I wonder how the law stands on needing to solder something together when it has been pre-pictured all assembled?

I've just soldered one of the capacitors back onto the Pi and that was my first attempt at it.

I'm really not happy about needing to do it to something that costs £30... Perhaps one of the other starter kits would be a better idea?

--

Mike

Yeah... I had the same reaction as Ray. I wonder how the law stands on needing to solder something together when it has been pre-pictured all assembled?

Hmm.. would be interesting..  but given it's quite clearly described as an unassembled kit for self assembly It's not like they're misleading anyone.  There must be other instances - not necessarily electronics related - where a kit is shown assembled, if for no other reason than it gives you a better idea of what you'll get when it's built.

For example, I think it would be slightly odd if you walked into IKEA and they had to have a jumbled pile of parts on display instead of the assembled wardrobe.

You haven't seen my local Ikea ! :-)

selsinork wrote:

... There must be other instances - not necessarily electronics related - where a kit is shown assembled, if for no other reason than it gives you a better idea of what you'll get when it's built.

You mean like the entire Heathkit catalog?  I loved Heathkit -- terrific assembly instructions, excellent schematics, good Theory of Operation.  By building it yourself you got a much better feel for how the product worked -- it wasn't just a throw-away black box.   I've been on the factory tour

There was a time when I would start going through withdrawal if I hadn't built a Heathkit in a while.  I think I was addicted to the rosin in the solder

Regarding Gertboard, I figure that if you don't like soldering then Gertboard will probably have limited use, since you'll have to do some soldering to interface other things to it.  Hey, at least the 25 mil pitch components are gone.  I think Gert went a little overboard with 0.1" nostalgia.  50 mil SOICs and 0805's are perfectly easy to solder, even for someone old enough to know about Heathkit.

John Beetem wrote:

 

There was a time when I would start going through withdrawal if I hadn't built a Heathkit in a while.  I think I was addicted to the rosin in the solder

Haha.  I held onto one of their old oscilloscopes out of nostalgia, can't bear to throw it away after a long and formative relationship that influenced my career direction.  I expect it still works, maybe I should fire it up.

Or shove an ARM board in there!

Morgaine.

John Beetem wrote:

 

There was a time when I would start going through withdrawal if I hadn't built a Heathkit in a while.  I think I was addicted to the rosin in the solder

Haha.  I held onto one of their old oscilloscopes out of nostalgia, can't bear to throw it away after a long and formative relationship that influenced my career direction.  I expect it still works, maybe I should fire it up.

Or shove an ARM board in there!

Morgaine.

When I started inhaling the fumes of melted solder Heatkit stuff had tubes on them and you could put things together with a 250W soldering iron.

Last piece I got from Heatkit and still have in working condition (once in a while I turn it on) is the Motorola MC6800 kit

Anyway if you want more tips about how to work with SMD components I put together a quick tutorial about how to put stuff on a board I designed for PIC MCUs

http://www.ljcv.net/pp28/pp28-tut.html

-J

Super job on both the Heathkit and the tutorial.

Bill