Raspberry Pi Journal #25

Adafruit LCD with Keypad kit

Nothing more to report, but I soldered the kit. At one point, I thought that I installed the 18 pin header wrong, but a quick check with the pdf manual on-screen (with color) instead of printed out shows that it's correct. How come the pins are so tall? The bottom pins are rather short.

I had trouble soldering the pins so close to the display.

I wonder if they make a special case for it?

Too late that I realize if I made a slim Raspberry Pi, I can just solder the GPIO directly, instead of using Header. Of course, that makes it a dedicated unit.

No time to download software. Will have to do the testing some other time.

Raspberry Pi Journal #24

Learning to Solder

Well, I got myself Adafruit LCD with keypad kit. There's only one problem: It's a kit and I'm a software guy. My last soldering activity was classified as "under cooked". Definitely not a good assessment. I haven't touched a soldering gun since.

But what to do? The LCD only comes in a kit. There's nothing to it, but buckle up and learn how to solder properly this time. I picked up Sparkfun Big Time soldering kit. And well, get to it.

I learned a lot along the way. How to do proper soldering. How to feed the lead to the hole+wire. What part goes where. I don't like it that the manual automatically assume success on the very first soldering hole, but that's exactly what happened. It went rather well.

The lead just went into the hole like water going down the drain. Perfect form! Not every time, but I definitely did it right. The fact that the kit works fine, including surface mounting the battery compartment, is confidence building!

I had some trouble with brown wrapper, but a squeeze with finger nail did help in removing the paper.

Today, Big Time. Tomorrow, LCD with Keypad!

There is one thing I don't understand. Somehow, no matter how I oriented the workspace, the fume kept going to my direction. Supposedly, it's harmless rosin, but I still don't want to inhale anything smoky. And why does it always goes to my direction? Turn it this way and that, nothing helps. Sigh.