Beginners guide to soldering

Hi there!

This is just a quick blog to introduce my beginners guide to soldering video tutorial:

On the off chance that blogspot screws up the video link, this is the permanent YouTube link: http://youtu.be/2d80i5SNXpg

If you're starting out with electronics and finding soldering frustrating, take a look. It's full of the important tips and techniques that make soldering a breeze.

In case you don't get a chance to view the full 40 minutes, here's some top tips from the video (plus a few extra!):

• The most essential piece of kit for soldering (other than a soldering iron) is the third hand - a simple device that will hold your wires in place while you solder. Spark Fun do a good one, but there's loads to choose from (just search for electronics, third hand on google).
• Wait for the iron to get properly hot before starting
• Cover the tip of the iron in solder, then wipe off the excess before using it. This coats it in fresh solder and makes it better at transferring heat.
• Use the heat proof sponge that (probably) comes with the iron to wipe off excess solder when it builds up. If you haven't got a sponge, any heat proof cloth will do.
• Always 'tin' your wires/components before trying to join them. This is basically coating the parts you want to join in a thin layer of solder, before actually trying to solder them together.
• If you accidentally melt the plastic at the end of the wire and it starts to cover the bits you're joining, trim them off and start again. Solder won't stick to plastic - there's no point trying!
• Make sure you've got a bit of ventilation, but there's no need to go nuts over it. I make sure I have the door to my study open so smoke doesn't build up in one room, and if it's warm outside I'll open a window.

And the number 1 rule! Heat the components you're joining, not the solder! You might find you have to touch the solder a bit with the iron to get things going, but the key is making sure that the components are hot. If you don't, the solder won't liquidize onto your components, and instead it'll just form annoying big blobs on the iron itself, which is immensely annoying!

Good luck!

Wendy light mark 2!

Time for second round of the Wendy light prototype. Last time I got things going (described here), with an ugly but functioning prototype of my light based alarm clock.

Today I'm doing a second round, with more of a focus on the aesthetics and usability of the clock. While I don't expect to end up with something that looks pretty yet, I'm aiming to improve the controls and work out the basic template for the fancy looking final version.

The big change is to turn this big chunk of buttons:

Into something that looks less like an eighties arcade game, and more like an elegant alarm clock that a beautiful lady might have in her bedroom.

The plan is to replace those buttons with 3 Phidget 1129 touch sensors, and a Sharp GP2D120 infra red range finder. The touch sensors will function as on/off, reading light and alarm cancel buttons; and the sensor will replace the snooze button.

I start off using a jig saw and a router to carve out the centre of a block of pine, then cut a square sheet of plastic to sit on top of it.

There's a hole cut out for the IR sensor, but the capacative touch sensors will pick up your finger within about half a centimetre, so they can comfortably sit below the plastic.

Tip: I've spent ages trying to find the best way to cut plastic. After much testing, I've found using a Dremmel with an abrasive attachment the best bet. If you do take this approach though, make absolutely sure you wear safety goggles - it will spit small chunks of hot plastic, and some of those will head for your face. Do not get melted plastic in your eyes!

Next up, the touch sensors:

After a bit of experimentation, I removed the chunky cable attachment and soldered on my own little headers; these are less bulky, which is important now that I'm trying to fit things inside a small and more elegant box.

Tip: If you get a hold of some of these sensors, it's worth knowing they seem very sensitive to power fluctuations - mine stopped working once the IR sensor was plugged in. I shoved a big 250uF capacitor across the power terminals which seemed to fix the problem. Other than that, they work pretty well - hook up Gnd and Vcc to those of the Arduino, and the data output (white cable if you haven't remove the socket) to an IO pin, and you'll get a HIGH signal if a finger is within range.

First step for the innards is to mount all the sensors on a couple of strips of wood that'll sit inside the box:

Next, I hook up all the Vcc and Gnd pins to a little bit of strip board. This allows me to easily attach the big capacitor and connect them to the Vcc and Gnd wires that go to the Arduino (along with the data wire from each sensor):

Tip: If your circuits are ever getting too messy, connecting small chunks of circuit together on a piece of strip board like this is a really good technique. You can cut up strip board with a hack saw, or (as with the plastic) using a Dremmel with an abrasive head (though once again - safety goggles!).

Next up, as I'm wanting this to be a little neater, I'm going to stop trailing 6 wires from bed side table to floor, and instead use a Maplins 9-way data cable to connect the switch  box to the Arduino:

Data cables are a great way to keep circuitry tidy, and come in either wrapped form (as above), or as ribbon cables. However, due to the tiny wires inside they can be a little tricky to work with, so I generally end up connecting each end to normal solid core prototyping wire; this allows me to use the data cables to bridge large gaps, but still plug things into prototyping boards or Arduinos at each end.

As I'm tight on space, on the box end I'm going to solder the data cable directly to the cables coming out of the sensors (plus another 2 for Gnd and Vcc).

Soldering wires together is a bit tricky to do well, and often results in fairly delicate connections that are easily broken with an accidental tug. A much neater approach (that I used on the Arduino end) is to solder the data cable to a small piece of strip board:

As you can see, this results in a much neater and stronger connection, that can be wrapped in more insulating tape to strengthen it further. Once this is done, you can easily solder normal solid core wire or pin connectors to the other end, making it easy to plug into an Arduino or prototyping board.

A last bit of work in the shed to drill out the holes and make a cover for the base of the switch box:

Attach everything together, along with some button labels (aka masking type with my writing on):

And it's ready to hook up!

Not a lot to show in terms of actual functional changes, though I may get around to a video of me waving my hand over the sensor to snooze the alarm! Other than that:

• I've tweaked the reading lights so the lightest setting is lighter (based on user feedback...), 
• The central LEDs now stay dimmed for anything other than the alarm
• The alarm cancel now triggers a small blue pulse effect, similar to the red/green ones for on/off. This is just to give some confirmation that the touch button worked.

So generally happy with prototype number 2. Final version will be fairly similar I think. The box itself I'll probably make out of white oak, then stain the same colour as the wood the bed is made of. Plus of course I'll have to make a proper box for my side of the bed too! Then a less fancy box for the Arduino under the bed; the LEDs fixed behind the wall; probably some small side buttons so you can set the alarm time and things; Printed button labels (ideally glow-in-the-dark). That should just about round off the Wendy light!

The Wendy Light

After watching Wendy suffer repeatedly in the mornings, I've decided to build a prototype light based alarm clock. The idea being that (as various research / existing products indicate), waking up as a result of changes in light is much nicer than load angry noises.

The system will initially be simple. I'll preset an MR005-001 clock breakout board (containing a DR1307 chip) to the 'correct' time from my PC, and use it to trigger a NeoPixel led strip.

Research as I undersand it suggests that your circadean rythm is largely dictated by ipRGC sensors in your eyes. These are especially sensitive to blue wave lengths, and not very sensitive to red; my clock will feature a red reading light (that automatically fades off after an hour), and a blue wake up light triggered at 8AM.

The initial step was setting up this real-time clock chip:

The clock, along with some stunning soldering (ahem)

It's a DS1307 real time clock break out board, that communicates with the Arduino over I2C. Fortunately, the folks at Adafruit have been good enough to provide a ready made Arduino library to supplement it, so getting the thing going is pretty easy. Here it is wired up:

The clock hooked up to the I2C pins of an Arduino Mega

And running their demo shows the time/date being regularly printed out just as you'd expect.

Next up, is the very funky neopixel LEDs. Also from Adafruit, these awesome full colour LEDs come in various forms (strips, grids, rings) and are great fun to play with. And of course, in true Adafruit style, a ready made Arduino library exists, so they're pretty much plug-and-play.

2 strips of Neopixels running at full whack

A quick point of note - if you do get some Neopixels (and I highly recommend it), it is really important to read the Adafruit guide. The strips work out of the box, but the information supplied about current requirements and protective components is worth knowing before you even think about plugging anything in. Reading documentation isn't my strong point, but after half an hour working out why my Arduino shut down whenever I turned them on, and 2 strips of destroyed LEDs, I begrudgingly read the docs and felt very silly for not doing so!

If you do blow some LEDs, often it'll only be the first few in the strip. Try chopping off the first few and the odds are the rest of your strip will be fine.

Also worth knowing that these LEDs use up a healthy number of amps on full power, so it'll be worth investing in a decent transformer. I'm running 86 LEDs at full brightness off a 4A supply from oomlout, which is doing the job nicely; For similar reasons, make sure your wiring can take enough current, or you'll end up with melted plastic in your project!

The final job is some basic wiring up of chunky switches, and some bodgy carpentry to mount them in a box. With the LEDs fixed to a chunk of door frame edging and stuck on top of the bed, we're all set.

Chunky buttons on Wendy's side of the bed

Inside of the button box

The Arduino and clock hidden under the bed

The LED strip lit up orange in 'reading light' mode

The circuitry is pretty simple, as there's no clever components going on here. Standard switch wiring up, plus the data line for the LEDs and the I2C lines for the clock:

You can see here 4 separate blocks (each in its own little actual physical wooden box). These break down into:

• The main clock circuit, consisting of the Arduino and the DS1307 clock.
• The lights, with a small protective circuit; a big capacitor to protect against spikes, and a small resistor to protect the data line.
• Switch Box 1 (on Wendy's side of the bed). This is just a collection of grounded push switches, each connected to an IO pin on the Arduino.
• Switch Box 2 (on my side of the bed). Due to a lack of chunky switches in my collection, this currently only contains a switch for the reading light, but would eventually have the same set as switch box 1.

The full code can be downloaded here.

And last but not least, a video of the clock in action!

Next up, once I've refined the code a little I'll be updating the system to be a little more aesthetic, and probably implement a few handy extra little features like setting the time/alarm.

(update, if after reading this lovely blog you are so excited you want to see more, the next step is here!)