I made a thing from a kit

[Bitter]

So I bought this

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06Y44CJ4B/

and I made this
VID_20181209_112626 by yayiranamile, on Flickr

I hope that embeds and plays correctly for everyone, I've never used flickr for video before. Here's a few photos anyway of it going together and the completed.

IMG_20181205_203039 by yayiranamile, on Flickr

IMG_20181209_112427 by yayiranamile, on Flickr

 

It was pretty fun to put together and a nice brush up on my soldering skills, I think I want to try some SMD stuff but they're so tiny, when I've messed with SMD in the past I've had so-so luck.

[kelvinhall05]

That's pretty cool. Might buy one to learn how to solder and (hopefully) to have a cool Christmas tree.

[Bitter]

The SMD practice kits I see around are various sizes from 'gnats ass' to 1210 stuff and the sizes in between. All I've done with SMD is modify some sense resistors to drive some LED's a bit harder when there was thermal capacity for it.

[Bitter]

I mean I consider any kit like that tree to be a practice kit just for fun since it's not something I'm being paid for and not something I'm applying to a purpose. When I modded the SMD sense resistor on the circuit board of a LED module that was for a driving light on a car of mine, so that had a purpose. If I were to solder back on a component on something I bought as damaged or that I broke myself or I was modifying it to be better (like replacing a whining choke or a rotten cap), there's a definite purpose to that. I fix cars so it's not like I do much soldering at work, every now and then I go through a circuit board and touch up a broken solder joint to see that fixes a module that we're having a hard time finding but that's not very common. I still want to improve my soldering skills and if I get to make some fun gizmos along the way from kits then all the better, what I really need to crack into learning is the why and how of the circuits, it's one thing to assemble something from directions, it's another to understand how it works, and it's entirely something else to design your own!