Freeduino Bare Bones Board Build (w/Macro shots!)

Last night I built two Freeduino Bare Bones Boards. I had two kits. One was from Moderndevice, and one was from MAKE. They were essentially the same kit, but different versions. There was one resistor difference I believe. The first kit took me quite a while to put together – probably about an hour. The second kit took about half of that. They were really quite straightforward. Put the parts in in the order they suggest and solder them up. You could even put them in in the wrong order – it would just make holding them in the board while you flip it over harder.

There were two sticking points in the instructions – (1) they say you need 4 of the small caps and they give you 5. You really need all five. (2) for some reason I read the debugging instructions at the end to say “troubleshoot if the light doesn’t turn off” as opposed to “if the light doesn’t turn on”

Other than that it felt good to break out the soldering iron again. Tips to make this as painless as possible?

• lay out all of your parts before you start. make sure you have them all.

• get an appropriately sized soldering iron (15-25w) with a sharp tip.

• follow the instructions regarding polarity of components. (Short leg is negative)

• a nice pair of flush cutters makes trimming so much nicer.

Take your time and have fun – put some music on, grab a beer and get to work!

Here are some closeups of the finished result. I shot most of these with my macro tube