Hackaday was at Chaos Communication Congress last week, and it’s one of those big hacker events that leaves you with so much to think about that I’m still processing it. Just for scope, the 38th CCC is a hacker event with about 15,000 attendees from all around Europe, and many from even further. If I were to characterize the crowd on a hardware-software affinity scale, I would say that it skews heavily toward the software side of the hacker spectrum.
What never ceases to amaze me is that there are a couple of zones that are centered on simple beginner soldering and other PCB art projects that are completely full 20 hours of the day. I always makes me wonder how it is possible to have this many hackers who haven’t picked up a soldering iron. Where do all these first-timers come from? I think I’m in a Hackaday bubble where not only does everyone solder at least three times a day, some of us do it with home-made reflow ovens or expensive microscopes.
But what this also means is that there’s tremendous reach for interesting, inviting, and otherwise cool beginner hardware projects. Hands-on learning is incredibly addictive, and the audience for beginner projects is probably ten times larger than that for intermediate or advanced builds. Having watched my own son putting together one of these kits, I understand the impact they can have personally, but it’s worth noting that the guy next to him was certainly in his mid-30s, and the girl across the way was even a few years younger than my son.
So let’s see some cool beginner projects! We’d love to feature more projects that could lure future hackers to the solder-smoky side.
I would say you experience if you enjoy soldering vastly depends on how good your iron, station, tips and solder are. I was once sitting at a professional station, had nice lead solder with a resin core, flux desoldering pumps and some isopropyl alc and everything went so smooth.
Now I just connect modules with DuPont cables and rather program. Shipping from China takes too long and I cannot mentally take the frustration if I broke a part, haha. But that is just me.
my problem is my soldering project probibly has a microcontroller in it, and i dont feel like programming it.
With such projects, i usually do the code first, getting something working on a common dev board or a prototype board, then putting together the permanent hardware version with a socket for the already-programmed and working microcontroller (or ESP module).
I code C and C++ for a living. Mostly kernel and driver development.
And I too usually don’t want to muck around and debug some microcontroller’s flashing procedure, build environment, etc.
Stuff like BASICstamp appealed me back in its heyday because throwing together with a Stamp wasn’t too hard and usually mostly worked on the first try.
These days I don’t mind some of the ready-to-go Arduino boards. They are good too because at least the bootloader is all setup when you buy it and the toolchain is right there in the Arduino IDE.
I did recently have fun with DaisySeed. But I didn’t fully setup the toolchain, so I just used some examples and a funny high-level graphical programming tool. So I haven’t actually gotten around to making the project I originally bought the dev kit for. Nice platform, just no time or ambition on my part to make use of it.
I hear this. Large amounts of work code usually results in lack of personnel hobby code.
But aside from that I did a personal project a few months back with kivy and despite all the reading and testing I did, I could not get the toolchain to spit out a working android apk. The actual code was fine and ran great through kivy.
Arduino and others having everything included, I have enough headaches at work.
Very true
I spent a large part of my career working with a 20W soldering iron, with lead free solder and the cheapest “shoe polish” flux. It made soldering a very, very painful process that I truly abhorred.
Then I took the plunge and got myself a still cheap but 60W iron, lead solder and gel type flux. It wasn’t an expensive upgrade by any means but now I don’t start sobbing while soldering simple things anymore. In fact I barely think about it because everything works as expected!
Yeah. I think it’s about 80% practice, and 20% tools. With poor tools or the wrong tools, the work becomes difficult and not fun.
The advantage of knowing how to solder (and having a decent iron around) is you can sometimes fix things when they break. Or do things like add color-coded headers to your raspberry pi zero. But it isn’t strictly necessary to MAKE stuff anymore.
Back when I was a kid and first learning to solder. The selection for kit projects was pretty limited. And they were a little bit expensive for what they were. But several magazines had schematics and stripboard layout that you could build yourself. Go to Radio Shack, buy all the components you need. And then you have something cool like a preamp for an old microphone, or an adapter for a nicer code key for a radio set. Lots of odd ball stuff could be built that wasn’t very complicated, but would have been expensive to buy pre-made. P.S. I grew up in the age of op-amps, so what you could build with a handful of parts was pretty significant.
One issue of Everyday Electronics magazine a few years ago (maybe 1980-something) had a small piece of Veroboard taped to the cover. Inside the magazine were several projects with component listings and placement diagrams. It was a great way to encourage beginners (me) into having a go at building something, and soldering was a necessity.
i dont like pouring tons of effort into a project just because when it comes time to write the code, im not in a coding mood. then it sits in a box for 3 years and gets scrapped.
… just 3 years?? Quitter ;-) I’m still getting around to finishing projects that I started 40+ years ago. 10 years is probably the median age of my in-progress projects. I do finish enough projects to maintain my self-respect.
I’m a lifetime solderer, soldering something at least once a week. Heathkits were a rare treat to put together, but I also did several of the sort of the little “P-Box” projects from Radio Shack. Not as many of those types of kits around, but they can be found.
Maybe HaD could feature a complete simple beginner hardware project every week?
“My favorite programming language is …solder.”—
Robert A. Pease
I credit my dad and a Heathkit project we built when I was 9 for starting me on learning to solder. I’ve been soldering close to 50 years in this hobby and every once in a while I come across something I made years ago. It’s amazing how ugly my soldering was but also that my ugly soldering has lasted and worked for so long. Like cad, 3d printing, programming, woodworking, soldering is a tool we use to make the things we want and tools take practice to perfect. Do it enough and it becomes second nature.
I suspect you already figured it out: the conference technically skews software. The attendees are surely hardware-cognizant, but perhaps not hands-on experienced with the physical. It’s probably a great delight and some street cred to have also earned their soldering merit badge. (or would that be a skill award?)
I think the idea of simple projects is at it’s best when the “simple” part is really leveraged. So that it’s not a “project” in the sense of being something to be planned, budgeted, and discussed or argued about. It’s a simple project in the sense of being something to experiment with and enjoy, right then and there, by just about anyone. Those kinds of simple projects are fantastic.
Buying a top end soldering iron from Weller or what have you isn’t even “cry once” it’s “gently sniffle once” at best compared to an oscilloscope or pretty much anything else needed for the hobby. And has a hugely disproportionate beneficial effect of the joy-frustration curve.