Week 1 Assignment

Matt Parker

 

Lesson 1: Not All Soldering Irons Are Created Equal

Or maybe they are and eventually some of them start to suck over time. The point is, if you're trying to solder and it doesn't seem to be working, it's probably the soldering iron, not you (the red ones in particular seem to suck the hardest). Try another one.

Lesson 2: A Few Words Can Be Worth A Thousand Pictures

These 2 parts look very similar, but apparenlty do very different things. The one on the left is a voltage regulator that regulates your voltage down to 5 volts and works nicely with Lab 1. If you use the part of the right, (which actually looks a lot more like the picture on from the lab found here) in the first lab, however, your lab won't work at all. Instead, it heats up while you try to figure out what you did wrong and then burns you when you attempt to pull it out. The lesson is it's important to read rather than just rely on the pretty pictures.

Result: Sensor Bar for the Wii

This is actually a lot easier than it sounds. It's basicly the exact same thing as the lab, just with IR LEDS in place of regular LEDs. I used a length of tube I found in the back of the shop to hold the IR LEDS in the correct position. I tested it out with my Wii and it works very well.