i was keeping these all on my windowsill, and with a touch of rearranging, we have a lil histiry of the assembly portion of my project c:
fruitlessly trying to layout how to organize all my wiring in (now VERY smudged and wiped away) marker, tryjn tk do Something before the solder i needed came in. (I should have been programming the software instead :p)
I THINK fhis was one of the first boards I soldered? if so, it eas done at like 450C, which was WAY too hot for the component, which is now hopelessly fried. good thing i got extras... Also, that solder tip is now suuuuper tarnished! its all rainbow_y....
The first actual circuit made with soldering. It just lights up an LED, but GOD it felt nice to actually make something that worked, lmao. We also have a NOT ruined LED matrix there, lmao :p
Attempts to solder up the connextions for an actual display board! It... sucked. The iron wouldnt stay hot enough, and if was a struggle to get my solder to melt at all befkre i had to take the iron lff to avoid frying my matrix. At some point I had trouble getting the solder lines to actually melt, and gave up. I thought it was cuz the solder there had burnt and become damaged*. This was around when i gave in to despair :p
I blrrowed a solder station from work. fhats different from just an iron in that it includes an external power converter, and a temp sensor in the iron's tip. this allows it to modify the amt of poeer flowing thru the iron, to maintain the settemperature. its fucking AMAZING. And itd why i was able to make this last circuit, which has all the column connections made via (admittedly a little shittily_laidout) solder lines! (rows will use jumper cables. its fonna be ugly, but hey man im tryin!).
Im really proud of this progress! i... wish itd happened a lil faster, or id remembered to grab the soldering station on FRIDAY, but.... hey, ya win some ya lose some. hoo boy, this is due in a week so... im gonna be dojng some SERIOUS fucking rush work :p
*(the actual problem is that at those spots there was a lot of ways for heat to transfer away from where i was trying to melt, so it just wouldnt! cyz i was using a shitty iron. those situatuons are still kinda hard with the station, but theyre doable now.)