I Made A Blinky!

Okay, so, getting back to Electronics.  I decided, last year, to try and dig my way back from the nothingness that's plagued me for over a decade.

A couple months ago I came across the free tutorial Getting To Blinky from Contextual Electronics.  Now, I can't afford the fee's he's wanting for the classes, but he has been nice enough to release a few freebies here and there, and I've been wanting to learn KiCad for a while now, so this was perfect.

Following along with the tutorial, I drew up the circuit (making my own version of the 7555 schematic design along the way), flipped that over into the PCB designer (and making another footprint), had the boards made up by OSH Park (who doesn't love purple PCB's!!!), and watched the tutorial episode where Chris realised he goofed up and had to get medieval on the 7555.  Thanks Chris.  Anyhow…  Ordered the components while I waited for the boards (and forgot the LED's), and then left it all sitting here in my desk for several months.  Yeah, life, it happens, what can you do.

Then this morning I woke up absolutely determined to put the thing together.  Pulled out my crappy cheap soldering iron, perched myself in front of the corner of our TV entertainment unit by the window, with the bits and pieces laid out in front of me; components, tweezers, scissors, solder, de-soldering braid, and my phone, with it's 4x camera zoom in place of a magnifying glass.  No flux, no clamp for the board (used double-sided tape to hold it down instead), but it was enough.  The solder joints look horrible, and I'm sure there's at least one or two on the IC that are only barely holding on, but after I was done, and I'd cleaned up the bits of packaging and put most of the stuff away, I pulled out a spare coin cell battery and threw it into the holder, and it blinked!  To my utter astonishment, the darned thing actually worked!  There it was merrily blinking away at me…  I Made A Blinky!

So now I have a fully functioning Blinky.  After over a decade of feeling like I need to get back into it but never quite getting there, I can't say that enough — as simple and small a start as it is, with so far yet to go to relearn what I've not used in so long, I'm happy.  I've learnt to use KiCad (including making custom schematic components, and footprints), order the board through OSH Park, find and purchase the parts required, and managed to assemble it successfully with barely adequate gear (and SMT to boot).  Most importantly, I've proven to myself that I can — and that little spark of confidence regained, is what Blinky was all about.

Where to now…  Well, first, I'd fixed up the little mistake from the tutorial in the design files, right after having ordered the boards.  So I think I'll order up a new set rather than persist with the nasty clipped IC leg hack I had to do with this one.  That, and purchase some flux, decent tweezers, a 10x magnifying loupe to check the joints and read part numbers, a clamp to hold the board rather than the horrid double-sided tape, and a hands-free magnifying lens so I can actually see what I'm doing.

Beyond that, I think, it's back to my desk clock with better display driving, an RTC module, and some updates to the firmware I've been planning.  Get that going on an Arduino prototyping shield, then off to OSH Park again (what can I say, I like purple!) for a single-board version.