Despite the snow & cupid competition, we had some not-so-lonely hearts show up yesterday to continue learning and honing their soldering skills. This was our 2^nd soldering session, during the first one the kids learned first by soldering wires together and then went on the kits. A little simpler kit with color changing/blinking lights was used this time for those that missed the first meeting or were quick to finish.

The LED chaser kit (Velleman MK173 rev2) was a medium difficulty build; in retrospect something easier for first timers would be better. But the coolness factor is very high, you can see it in this video link to Connor’s just after he finished. The socket helps protect the IC from overheating, but 44 solder joints is a lot to do. Solder pads are close together on both kits, not unusual, which offered opportunities for many kids to learn unsoldering techniques (some more than others). Glad we had a couple of solder suckers to clean up the bridging and over ambitious solderers! We also had one solder pad on one of the boards come loose but hard to tell if that was a circuit board problem or not.

The color changing LEDs kit (Lux Spectralis 2) was definitely simpler with 24 solder points, but was bought on clearance so now hard to find. It has 38 modes of color/flashing to choose from and could be easily finished under an hour or less. The IC (ATtiny13a, no socket included) held up well to overheating, least from our experience. One kit was short a few parts, something we’ll plan for next time.

We’ll be doing more learning to solder classes, this is a skill that generated an lot of interest from both young and old. Our next meeting will be using App Inventor again, part of our series building up to Arduinos and other microcontrollers.

Our first ‘learning to solder’ session last Sunday drew quite a crowd. With 20 kids showing up and quite a few parents there too, we packed the FYCDP house on Crown Street. George Edenfield, who’s involved in Putnam County Auxiliary Communications and an active amateur radio operator, helped lead the session. Many of the kids brought their own soldering irons or borrowed one from a parent, but only a few had ever soldered before.

After going through the basics and soldering safety, George had everyone solder two wires together so they could learn how to handle a soldering iron and learn how to recognize a good soldering joint. We then moved on to a small kit that creates a ‘chaser’ effect in 6 LEDs. The kids picked it up pretty quickly, although most needed someone to help them with the first soldering joint on the small circuit board. A few even got to learn how to use a solder sucker (desoldering tool) when they got a little carried away putting solder on the copper pads on the circuit board. Desoldering techniques, a possiblebackup topic if there was extra time, will be covered at a future meeting.

Although the kits didn’t get completed due to time and everyone helping each other, everyone kept saying how much they liked it and wanted to do more. So we’ll continue working on those that didn’t get it completed at our next meeting, February 14^th, and for those that did or missed the Jan 31rst meeting we’ll have another simpler, quicker soldering project. It was so popular we ran out of the chaser kits.

Today we assembled some really inexpensive Google Cardboard kits and explored different 3D virtual reality programs that use a cell phone for viewing. By using the cell phone gyro for judging head movement and the magnetometer as an input device, with a little cardboard and a couple of lenses you can experience virtual reality!

We started with some ‘un-certified’ Google Cardboard kits, I suspect these are version 1 models vs. the latest version 2. These do not have the QR code that can help with configuration. These particular units don’t come with any instructions, which since they don’t strictly follow the Google Cardboard guidelines, made a little more challenging build. But really not that hard and adding some masking tape made them even sturdier. And they do work!

The real fun began after Alice got her’s assembled first and then began wowing… everyone else starting racing to finish theirs. The technology is impressive and the demo app is a great place to start. There are so many more apps out there already that it will take some time to learn the best ones. Some of us old folks liked the Paul McCartney video app where you are on-stage for one of his concerts and can look around 360 degrees to watch things from the band perspective. Impressive fireworks and sound too! The VR Roller Coaster app was a hit with the kids, although I think all of them also tried the different cities in the demo, starting with Paris where you can walk around the Eiffel Tower.