Electronics, first steps.

So following on from my previous entry, where I decided I was going to build a cycle computer as an electronics project, to learn something new, I have purchased a RaspberryPi and some sensors to play with. (I purchased the stuff I thought I'd need from Pimoroni, a sheffield based company who give a proportion of their profits to the RaspberryPi foundation)

 So, I have started to have a look at what I can do.

 First things first, the RaspberryPi was bought with an SD card with Noobs pre-installed. I used this to install Rasbian (a port of my favourite Linux distribution optimised for the RaspberryPi). This was embarrassingly easy, or at least would have been if the small USB keyboard I was using wasn't faulty1. Easy solution I'll get a new one this weekend (probably).

Next the sensors, these came with little header pins that needed soldering to the boards (if not soldering wires directly to them, which I am not doing as I am using a breadboard to try things out before fixing things in stone) and I have learnt, I either need a hotter soldering iron and a considerable amount of practise, or a seriously massive amount more practise at soldering.

So in conclusion I need to spend more time on thinking about this stuff, and I need to spend more money.

1 This was not bought from pimoroni, but an old keyboard I had lying around.

posted at 09:15:29 PM on 21 Mar 2014 by Craig Stewart

Tags:fail soldering electronics learning stuff project