For Christmas, one of the presents I recieved was an LED hourglass soldering kit. A week or so after the new year started, I successfully soldered it all together.
I wasn’t that familiar with soldering as a whole, so mum decided it would be better if I practiced first on some extra resistors we had lying around. I soldered a few of them together and when I felt confident enough, I started to give my kit a go.
Mum showed me how to do it carefully and fast enough so that I wouldn’t blow anything. We didn’t have spares for many of the parts that we needed so if I blew any of the components, then we’d be toast. After I watched her do it a few times, I gave it a go. I was extremely happy that nothing broke.
Building the Timer
I soldered the main componenets to the board first, as there weren’t that many of them. The chip holder, both switches and the adapter socket all got soldered on without any problems. After everything else was soldered on without a probelm, I still had 57 LED’s to solder on. It seemed a little daunting at first, but after soldering on a few, I got more confident with it.
Before long, I completed it. I was both excited to see it work, but dreading incase I’d done it wrong. Only one way to find out though. So, we plugged it in and turned it on.
And it worked! First time, without any hesitation. It shocked me. I thought I would have at least blown one of the LED’s and that I’d have to redo it. But it worked, and was ticking away slowly, perfectly content. We pressed one of the buttons I soldered on, and it sped up gradually with every button push. It was shockingly bright too. It surprised us both how luminous it was once plugged in. I’m pretty confident that I could use it as a torch if I needed to.
I’m extremely happy with the results, and it was such good fun. While I tend to doubt my ability of doing something I’m not familiar with, I hope that I’m tackling it with all these projects.
Regardless, I am really excited for my next project.
Cerys