Arduinome phase 2: soldering components (I)

I started this second phase of my Arduinome build process by soldering the 1N4148 diodes in the SparkFun button pad. The diodes are a two terminal device that normally have a mark in one of the terminals. The mark on the terminal should match the marks in the diode pads in the backside of the SparkFun Buttonpad, as can be seen here:


This is how the 4 boards look with all the diodes mounted:


I soldered the diodes on the botton side of the board, which is not the usual (normally you would solder the component in the oposite side of the board where you placed it). The reason for doing that is to avoid the solder and the small part of the terminal left over damage the silicone.

This is how it looks with all dioses soldered and terminals cut:



The next step was to solder the LEDs. The first thing was to place the LEDs on the top side of the SparkFun Button Pad PCB:



The LEDs do also have two terminals (it is not surprising since they are also diodes). The pad marked in the PCB for the LEDs have a circle with a flat side. The flat side is where the terminal named cathode should be soldered. The cathode is also the shortest terminal of the LED. More info about the LEDs in this wikipedia page.

This is how the boards with the diodes and LEDs soldered looks like:



The next thing I did was to glue the four boards together and to solder wires connecting all the grounds in columns and all the switches and LEDs connections in rows. This is the result:




There are better Arduinome building instructions in bricktable's webpage.

And that is all for now. Still missing from this phase:

- Making the Arduinome Shield (I am brewing my own instead of buying the PCB)
- Making the connections between Arduino and the Arduinome Shield.
- Making the connections between the Button Pad and the shield.

Check out the whole Arduinome build log here.