Should DIYAutoTune.com offer a learn to solder kit?
 

This is an idea we've been kicking around, and MT's own Joe Perez recently gave it a new kick: Should we offer a cheap, simple kit for learning to solder? This would be an easy-to-solder PCB with some simple components, packaged like our MegaSquirt kits. We have been debating two options:

1. A little gizmo with blinking lights that doesn't really have any useful functions, but costs less than $10.

2. Something that has a limited automotive function, such as a shift light, fan controller, or narrow band O2 readout. This may cost a bit more, around $20 tops for something simple.

Which one would you guys prefer, and if we went with option 2, what sort of simple gadget would you like to see? It would probably just be a PCB, no case.

I think this is a GREAT idea to get solder-retarded people like me to start learning to do this shit on our own so we can buy more of your diy kits.

I'd prefer option 2. Shift light sounds good. afr readout doesn't sound bad at all either. what about electronic det cans?

How low could you keep the price point if you combined 1 and 2? One piece just to practice on, and then a "project" that has a useful function to complete once you are getting more confident with your skills.

10+20=30? lol

I was going to chime in and say "what, you didn't like my idea about the TV pong game?"

However, 18psi's suggestion about a cheap, simple filter / amplifier combo to drive a set of headphones would be massively useful.

The downside is that it's not going to provide as clear of an indication to the user that "yes, you assembled it properly" vs "nope, you fucked something up", as compared to a digital circuit with a display of some kind. An analog device might be improperly assembled and yet still provide an output, albeit one that it distorted or attenuated in some manner that is not obvious to a user who isn't a golden-ear and familiar with how it's supposed to sound.

There was absolutely nothing wrong with your suggestion for the pong kit. In fact, I loved it! I also like the electronic 'bug' that crawls towards light. Just neither of those are automotive related. Not necessarily a deal breaker as much as out of our usual element. We had a couple of other ~$20 ideas as well that were automotive related (at least loosely).

Basically it's a skill and confidence builder for those new and/or uncomfortable with a soldering iron, and if we can also make it both inexpensive and fun, everyone wins.

Oh, don't take me too seriously. The Pong game suggestion was kind of a joke. :D

:2cents:
As a noob with very marginal solder skills, I would be all over this. If I'd had more confidence in my skill, I would have bought a kit for my MS2 rather than paying Brainy to build one for me.

Personal opinion here, but I think you would be better off if it was something semi-automotive related. People who visit DIYAutoTune are already into the automotive electrical thing, so stick with your market. Shift light sounds somewhat fun and could be useful, something like the Shift-I light thingus, but DIY.

I have a basic grasp of electrical theory, enough to look at a circuit diagram and figure it out, but you might want to think about adding some sort of explanation with the project. Telling me to put a capacitor in a circuit with a 555 timer is one thing, telling me why changing the value of the cap to make the LED blink at different rates is a whole another ball of wax. Come up with a dozen or so projects like this and you could sell them to kids for highschool electronics class projects.

keep it simple. make it mimic some of the transisitor circuits used for outputs and inputs and if someone wants to use it for an MS install, they can.

In for shift light under $20 kit. Seriously.

I like the idea of building your own shift light, would it be a sequential shift light, or just a simple set to x RPMs and it comes on?

shift light circuit would be easy. there's a few ways to implement different approachs to it.

hell i have enough outputs I could light up a different color for every 1000RPMs on my tach.

I'd buy a $20 shift light kit, for sure!

Oooh, sequential shift light circuit for $20-ish? I CAN solder and I'd buy that. I think that's the ticket. Make it useful for noobs and desirable for the rest of us.

+1 on shiftlight even though I already have one Arduino-based in my Spec car.
Also Brain: you only need one output (tach) for a LEDs per 1krpm, but needs more gizmo in the shiftlight :)

yeah just didoes and crap will do it.

Is this a tach/shift light or just a light?

Like this:
http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...3UxWBmx9W_wA8g
Or this:
http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...HWLr0Xrz-y8pJ_

I think my solder skills are fine, it's just my consistency is off, a blank board with random diodes and resistors we could solder over and over again in a big line would be good.

Like this:
http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...y7pA9D61y4dcVw

As long as the kit walks the novice solderer (like me) through the various things I've read about here like "through mount" and "surface mount", etc. then I'm all for it.

I mean, I've soldered before when installing stereos and whatnot but it seems soldering on a circuit board would require more finesse.

get a pencil tip for your iron, and really skinny silver solder. My first circuit board was my ms3 and it went great, with those above tips.

Thanks for the tips. I'd still want to practice on something less expensive first :D

Me too.

I built a 14point7 wideband as my first soldering project. It worked great until it shot sparks and smoke after a week or so. Paid Brain to build my MS...

Edit: Matt, I would have bought something like this from you if it was available.

I'd definitely want this. I'm considering a DIYPNP, but my lack of soldering skills are making me consider an assembled ECU.

I think it's a good idea, but I'm not sure that I would buy it.

The big thing keeping me from building PCB's is the ignorance to electronics. I see these PCB's and all the stuff that goes on them and I have no clue what they're doing. They'e all basically "little magical boxes and tubes" that make sparks go through wires and make my car go fast. Maybe if I learned something I'd be more interested.

^^^ this.

The biggest single mistake I see people making is using crappy irons and solder that's too large. The tip of your iron is the single biggest factor in determining how easy of build you're going to have, and unfortunately, cheap irons use cheap tips. You simply cannot buy a good tip for a crappy iron, because they don't make them. (It's sort of an inverse-Gillette model; they make you buy an expensive iron to have access to the good tips.)

I'm perhaps a little out-of-touch with reality on the subject of irons, since I do this stuff for a living. Thus, even the iron in my garage at home is a pro-grade Weller unit, and at work, I have access to a pair of $800 Metcal MX500s. I've had the same tip on my iron at home for about ten years now, and it's still in near-perfect condition. A the tip on a Radio-Shack iron will be corroded and useless within the first hour of operation.

How much do you guys think is reasonable for a good iron?

As an example, with a better tip on it, this unit would probably be "adequate" for building an ECU.

If you want a really good iron, this one is the current-gen equivalent of the one I use. It's $83.55. Is that too much to pay to have a really good iron to assemble your $450 ECU with, and that'll last for decades?



Now, I will differ slightly on the matter of solder. Silver-bearing solder, and especially the lead-free variety, just isn't as good as the old stuff. The absolute best solder for general-purpose electronics work is what's known simply as 63/37 (63% tin, 37% lead).

Why is this? Because it's idiot-proof. 63/37 has the lowest melting point of all solder alloys, and more importantly, it has virtually no plastic range. Most solder alloys go through a gradual phase change from liquid to solid as they cool, and so there's a point where, if you move the parts at all, you wind up with a crappy, crystalline-looking joint which is likely to break. 63/37 is unique in that it transitions from a liquid to a solid almost in a single step, so the chance of producing a bad joint is reduced.

60/40 is the more traditional blend for electronics work, and it's fine, too. Still has a low melting point, you just have to be more careful with it as it solidifies.

Also, don't screw around with the fancy "clear flux" or "no-kleen" shit. You want plain ole' rosin core, icky-brown-flux solder.

Diameter-wise? .062" seems to still be the most common, and this was fine back in the days of tabbbed point-to-point wiring inside console radios (eg: the 60s.) For delicate stuff, you want something in the vicinity of .020" to .032". You have to feed a lot more of it in to cover large joints (like the legs of TO220 FETs) however it makes things a lot easier on small parts, especially those damn TO-92 transistor pads on the 3.0 board. (I don't know why they designed the pads that way. TO-92s are a lot easier to solder when the pads are spaced out in a triangular shape.)

If you live in an area where Radio Shack is the only option, they only have one solder that you'll want: http://www.radioshack.com/product/in...erValue=Solder It's a 60/40 blend at .032", so it's not perfect, but it's good enough.





They're quite simple, really. All electronic components are powered by smoke. So long as the smoke stays inside them, they work. If you let the smoke out, they stop working.

Solder: I prefer SN60PBCu2 myself, 0.5mm. I tried to stick with lead-free for awhile, failed miserably when trying to solder little parts.

An expensive, fine tip does work wonders, yes.

I have some nice, actual lead 60/40 1.0mm I use for general wire splicing.

I found it was WAY too thick when I started doing my first circuit board. I only have radio shack around so I went there looking. I got 60/38/2 silver solder in .015 diameter and it works pretty nice.

In my experience RS has crap solder, but if you pay a little extra for their silver stuff it's actually pretty good. I enjoyed working with the really skinny solder, as even though it's a touch more work, it's really easy to get that PERFECT amount on your joint, which really helps when you're soldering stuff that's really close together.

Hustler: I have NO electronic knowledge like Joe or Rev do. I got into this stuff because I hated butt splices and wanted to learn a cleaner way to work with splicing wires in my motorcycles.

Eventually that evolved to me building full wiring harnesses, and now, making megasquirts. I never got into MS before the ms3, and I'm not sure if I could, as I have no desire to learn custom circuits/etc. But I have found, if you are very tedious about following the directions for assembly, it damn near builds itself.

When I hooked it up to the stim for the first time and everything "just worked" I couldn't believe it.

In to learn to solder.

"Hooked on Solder worked for me!" <you can use this

Sequential.

Also thinking about sequential lights to hook up to any 0-5V sensor for the track crew (think TPS or a pressure sensor mounted on a brake line). I see plenty of track cars that have a simple brake light on the dash to get picked up by the in car camera so the driver can see when they applied the brakes. One of the ideas we tossed around would be a sequential, multiple led display that would light up depending on how hard you hit the throttle or brake. The kit would be cheap, but would also require an inexpensive pressure sensor if used as a brake display.

Sounds like you are looking to supply kits like these-
http://www.maplin.co.uk/components/electronic-kits

Det cans ?????
http://www.maplin.co.uk/super-stereo-ear-kit-32208

I have this $30 wonder:
http://www.circuitspecialists.com/so...g-station.html

which is the cheap version of Joe's favorite above. and if you scroll down, you'll see you can get replacement tips for it. the long conical tip is fine for doing stuff like replacing the dinky, fine pitch surface mount stuff.

But just as important for normal soldering is this jazz:
http://www.circuitspecialists.com/null/csi927.html

http://www.circuitspecialists.com/co...569/300/CSI927

How often do you need to change tips?

Rather than a shift light, is a turbo timer reasonable? Or, would that be too complicated?

How about a dash dial that allows us to pick our windshield wiper delay?

I'm in for this, and I know how to solder. Prices for commercial shift lights are redonkulous.

C

I would like that too. Most of the stuff I have soldered has been for making longer lengths of cord for kids to put inline with light bulbs and batters in class to make a circuit. It did matter how sloppy my solders were as the kids would play with the wire and screw them up anyway.

almost never. maybe once since I got the thing in 06. my current tip is a little mashed up but it's perfectly tinned and totally useable.

I hate judging by sight alone, but that looks like a pretty decent soldering station, actually. And if the tips are durable, all the better.

I've used some that look pretty good, and even cost more than my Weller, that are damn near garbage. This one is a good example:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...500_AA300_.jpg

http://www.amazon.com/Hakko-Solderin...958829&sr=1-11

The chief down at Cox Radio in Birmingham bought one last month while I was down there. Well-built, but the tip didn't flow well (solder didn't like to stick to it) and it had really poor recovery; if you put it onto a large terminal (like one of the pins on a male XLR connector) and tried to flow solder into the joint, all the heat got sucked out of the tip and it took forever to heat up again so that you could continue.

Metco? Damn Joe I thought my adjustable temp weller was baller.

I took a gamble and bought this one a while back:

http://www.proskit.com/images/6PK-976NA.jpg

works really well compared to the weller stations I grew up using. its even a PWM based heater circuit

What the heck is Metco?

Wait, you mean Metcal?

Yeah, the MX500 is without a doubt the best soldering station I have ever used.

One nice thing about it is that the "tips" are actually cartridges about 6" long, which contain their own heater and temp sensor. To change tips, you just yank out the old one (with needle-nose pliers) and then shove the new one in. Takes about five seconds. And because each tip is calibrated to its own specs, there is no need for a manual temperature control. You put a big tip in, and it heats up to "big tip" specs. Put in the 0.4mm tip, and it heats up to "tiny tip" specs.

Warmup and recovery? Instantaneous. I turn the iron on, and in the time it takes me to focus the microscope it's ready to go.

With the right iron, you can pull a TO252 off of a 1" pad with vias every 5mm, then change tips and lift a single leg on an LQFP-144 in under a minute.

Badass iron:

Attachment 240871


But so as not to totally derail the thread, the key point is this: apart from knowing what you are doing, having a good-quality iron and the right solder is the single most important factor in determining whether you are going to have an easy build and a good-looking finished product, or a frustrating time and a crappy, unreliable board. You don't have to spend a thousand bucks, but don't expect to find what you are looking for at Radio Shack, either.


Sidebar: I just realized that the two Metcal irons that we have at work, combined, are worth more than my car. Of course, every single one of the PCBs that we use those irons on are also worth more than my car, so I guess it evens out.

Pretty good deal. I and few friends have this one.

http://www.parts-express.com/pe/show...number=374-100

For the record, we use the 60 watt version of the first iron you posted for our through hole soldering. We tried out a much more expensive setup - can't remember who made it, but our solder tech tried it for a couple days and went right back to the Weller iron.

(And when we do any surface mount soldering? We use an electric pancake griddle. Seriously. It's OK for short prototype runs and the like.)

+1 on the 63/37 solder.

My favorite solder of all time is the radio shack high tech solder which is... 63/37!

Melts quickly, cools quickly, is awesome.

http://www.radioshack.com/product/in...ductId=2062718

You do this for rework, or for reflowing whole boards?

I've heard of folks using toaster-ovens for reflow. You're probably the first person I've heard of who uses a pancake griddle. We don't do any whole-board reflow here in the lab, we just use the Metcals and the microscope. And yeah, we do occasionally assemble entire prototype boards that way. I don't think it would be practical for us to reflow them in-house, as you'd need a silkscreen setup to apply the paste (we use a lot of 0402 discretes and really fine-pitch QFP ICs. Applying paste by hand would probably bridge every single pin on the board.)

We flow entire boards with the griddle. We have stencils made for each type of board to help apply the solder paste. This allows us to rapidly produce reasonably priced prototypes and other testing implements.

A lot of our rework can be done with a standard iron.

but get it in .022"

Plus their $7 45-watt iron and you're working with what I use every day.


I had a better a Weller WLC100, but the wand burnt up and i just went back to my RS iron and plug it into the Weller station. The RS tips are small enough but only last a few builds and round off very quickly. One of these days I'll replace the wand for the Weller again, they had much better tips.

How about a fuel injector tester/driver? We could use it to test/clean injectors with some sort of preset program...

We've kicked around the idea of an injector test bench, but need to figure out if it can be done affordably.

We ordered a couple Velman kits (it would have provided a good ready-made option to get started with had things turned out better) and weren't impressed. All the parts were dumped in one big bag with no labels, the board lacked plating so it was hard to get solder to stick, and the one sided board had traces that could easily peel off. So we'll be designing all the learn to solder kits in house and having our own team assemble them.

Sweet! Thanks for the update! Can't wait to see what you guys come up with :bigtu:

Sure has been awhile.

Maybe we can occupy DIY's parking lot in Decemeber when we are at Road Atlanta. Our protesting signs could be EPIC.

99% of the amperage occupy 1% of the circuits?





Oh wait, that's the headlight harness in my '73 F250 :giggle:

Way off topic, but someone needs to build a decent 4v throttle body with a TPS that's not 1000cfm but will still bolt to a standard Holley 4150/4160 squarebore carb flange :vash: Put TBI injectors in it and I'll buy like 6 of them.

I built the MegaStim to ensure I was man enough to build a MegaSquirt. :)

This has been on back burner - there's a couple other projects going on, but you haven't seen the last of this one. Things on the drawing board include a fan controller and shift light, and maybe some others.

Now that my airbag is fuxored (removed driver and pass side) I have a light flashing at me I would like to repurpose. And since I don't have an autotragic trans I also have a "hold" light that is bored. I may use a standalone light at some point but I would like to avoid clutter for now and make use of these currently worthless indicators. Since I have two of them they could be sequential.

Lars, Occupying an empty parking lot on the weekend when I could be grinding rubber off of my alloys at Road Atlanta sounds slightly less than inviting. Now if they haven't done it by The Mitty we will disrupt every classroom session with bullhorns. Do you hear me Matt? lol.

And Joe Perez will be there protesting the baseless incarceration of the MS3X schematics or some such lost cause. I think he is the 1% or something. I'll support Joe in whatever because I'm a puppet to the master. I drove his car once at an autocross so we're tight.

Drove it? You beat my best time of the day by a couple of seconds on the first try. (How embarrassing.)

Hmm. Occupy Bowling & Grippo?

No I didn't. It was I that was thoroughly beaten by your driving prowess. I will not have such rumors spread. You are far too modest. If for any reason I did turn in a better time I was reckless and cheating. I swear by it.

Actually, I was suggesting DIY Autotune's tent at The Mitty. If you are there I am as well, good sir. Bullhorns will be available. To The Mitty we ride! {clops coconut shells together rhythmically}

Any news on a solder kit? I'm interested if it happens.
Also, any new years deals on the MegaSquirt-III UnAssembled Kit?

Thanks.

Yeah, I didn't get a shift light kit in my stocking and I'm a bit miffed.

I've tried to solder trailer wires and a few other things in the past and it always worked but went poorly. I lack tools and training. Chinese harbor freight iron and the solder that comes with it doesn't help. And having no helping hands always sucks.

I PM'd Brain a few days ago about redoing the jumper harness on the MS1 to fit my car's harness because it is a different year from what it is set up for and haven't heard back. I'm afraid to touch the little bitty pins and wires with my skills and tools. It's not that I don't know what needs to be done, but I don't trust myself to do a nice job and I don't want it to be crappy and risk poor connections.