Description
Step up your game from the I learn soldering SMD kit! You’ll get more components, a whole lot more solder joints and a circuit that you can marvel at! Solder yourself a white LED coin-cell flashlight.
From a soldering point of view you’re getting a bigger variety of parts and footprints with some slightly smaller or more “exotic” ones too (side view white LEDs, SOT23-6, SOT23-3, 0805 and 0603 passives). While not hard by any absolute measure (these are still “big” parts nowadays and there’s a lot of room for your soldering iron) this will be a challenge if you didn’t do any extensive SMD work yet.
The circuit in it self (it’s printed onto the PCB so you can show it off :P) is built around a very common power converter design, commonly called “step up” or “boost” converter. This is because this type of circuit is able to “step up” the voltage of the power source (3V coin cell battery here) to a higher one (in this case, enough to light up the two white LEDs in series which takes about 6V).
What’s in the kit?
one PCB and all the required parts stuck to a card with proper label for each!
The kit includes one spare white LED as these are a bit hard to solder for first-timers!
Who’s this for?
Anyone can do this in our opinion, but it might require a bucket full of patience if you have little experience with soldering SMD parts. Understanding how the circuit actually works will require some electronics knowledge however (for example what’s voltage vs. current, knowing what a transistor/diode/capacitor… is).
What tools do I need?
- a soldering iron (not-humongous-tips will make your life easier)
- some solder
- tweezers (!)
- (recommended) some magnifying glass
- (recommended) a multimeter
- (recommended) flux pen / paste
Our kit is fully Open Source Hardware: OSHWA certification DE000019. All ECAD data (free RS Designspark required) and documentation is in the Github repository.
Totally new to soldering? Read our 101 SMD soldering tips
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