Quote:
Originally Posted by evanperryg
anyone have suggestions for cheap soldering kits? Especially ones with medium to large joints like those that students will be using on the bot?
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For solder projects I like
Sparkfun,
Tindie,
Adafruit.
Ramsey Electronics for radios, and cool retro Nixie tube things.
I'm a big fan of building sensor things and putting them together on a board and making sure the connections are soldered.
But I'm also in the camp that says "things that carry power or can be flexed have crimps for connections." So all the boat and robot things I play with have crimps.
So I would build my cool ARM / PIC controlled 9 way motion and realtime star sensor on a board and do my usual solder stuff. Off board would most likely be a screw compression connector or some type of RJ-xx connector that locks in place.
Both crimping and solder have their places. My Roboteers learned today how to solder and got a cool microprocessor with an 8*8 led matrix display they can control with a $4 remote. What I missed was the ability to spend another hour and go "this is how this works".
The "jellybean" level of micro processors is pretty amazing. The board we built has a switch, battery holder, IR sensor, 8 bit processor and a R*C digital LED matrix. In 1974, that would have taken an whole board of 7400 logic chips and hand wire 64 LEDs In 1994 it would be down to a big chip and glue electronics, in 2013, it all fits in a 1" square.