Miserable SMD Challenge
Do you enjoy soldering as much as I do? Do you like to challenge yourself? Finally, do you want to feel joy and misery simultaneously? The former or latter depends on your skill level with SMD soldering.
The challenge and the results
Although it wasn't directly relevant to my work at the time, my manager bought and challenged me with a very intriguing and exciting opportunity to check my SMD soldering skills. The package I got had two kits in it - "The Unfortunate SMD Challenge" and "The Misery Edition of the SMD Challenge"
| SMD Challenge Credit | Misery Edition |
|---|---|
 |
 |
I've started the work because I am very grateful for such an opportunity and my love for challenges. First, the SMD challenge. It was tough but not too sweaty. After this, I started to assemble the Misery Edition board. There's something in it, even in the name, that attracted my attention from the very beginning. The looks I got from my colleagues told me how weirdly excited I was about this challenge. The excitement spread, and they also anticipated seeing the results soon. Well, here are my results.
Try to guess what the Misery Edition board says!
Hurdles
The biggest hurdles in these challenges are:
- lack of magnification tools (e.g. microscope)
- the fragility of the LEDs
- 01005 resistor (duh)
These elements are not only fragile but also very light and not easy to find - never lose it from your eyesight. And be careful when you start feeling miserable not to be like, "Phew... That's tough". This little sigh will send any tiny SMD component not attached to anything very far - to the galaxy of lost and never found.
After soldering the Misery Edition, I got absorbed with the connector header available on the board. There is an MCU on this board, a piece of electronics that can do something smart, some logic! It's fairly cheap and small, not for heavy lifting, but certainly, I can figure out the pinout and do something fun with it. We have 5 LEDs on the board, and I thought that Morse Code using a light strobe, plus randomizing the blinks, would add an additional challenge to the overall picture.
It is a pleasure to be a part of the 0201 club!
Relevant Links
https://hackaday.io/project/25265-an-unfortunate-smd-project https://hackaday.io/project/25265-an-unfortunate-smd-project/log/71954-0201-club