Only had a couple of minutes this evening, but was keen to get the ball rolling so I soldered the diodes on one of the sparkfun boards.

Super easy going. Diodes are very clearly marked on the sparkfun pcb. There was a lot of legs to cut off, and I think I may need to go over them again later so they don’t stick in the buttons.

Next up is the LED’s. Which seem fairly safe as well. I also found a nice way to test for any shorts in my soldering (yes I still don’t trust it). With the diodes being uni-directional for current. If once it’s soldered in, take your meter on the ohm setting and touch the legs that if you can only get a reading in with your meter in one direction (i.e. red on the left one, black on right, then switch), you should be able to confidently say that you don’t have any cross leg solder shorts.

I’m hoping that once I have the LED’s and the diodes in place that there is some fairly simple means to test the connections — or maybe by then I might be more trusting of my soldering – it is easy going so far.

Didn’t have time to set up the timelapse, but I’ll get that sorted for tomorrows progress report.