Kits are a great way to practice your soldering skills, with the added bonus that the finished product does something interesting. Thanks to YouTube, anyone can go from zero to solder-ninja and thanks to sites like Tindie, there are a lot of great project designed to practice those skills. Let’s take a look at some of the electronics kits made by Tindie sellers.
Easy Joule Thief Kit:
Batteries don’t keep a constant voltage throughout their discharge cycle. This means that towards the end of a discharge, the voltage can drop too low to be useful in a particular circuit whilst there is still energy left in the battery. A joule thief is a simple voltage booster that will allow you to squeeze every last joule of energy left in a battery. The Easy Joule Thief kit made by Makersbox provides a great introduction to soldering and fits on a standard AA battery . Step by step documentation is provided for assembling the kit, and the PCB design files are provided should you want to roll your own board.
LED + Solar Power Soldering Kit:
This is a cool little kit because it uses interesting components, namely the solar cell and a 1F super-capacitor. Charging from solar power takes 15 minutes or 2 minutes from the USB port built into the board. This kit is designed to be worn as a necklace, meaning you can easily show off your mad soldering skills to your friends. “Whaddya mean your necklace doesn’t have a super-capacitor in it?! ” The kit creator Lumen Electronic Jewelry has done a great job on build documentation so even if you’re totally new to this stuff you’ll be grand.
A funny shaped PCB and a microcontroller? We must be in kit heaven. The SnapNsew board designed by Makersbox is designed to let you easily make a soft circuit project ( a circuit made with conductive thread and fabric). The idea behind this kit is great – you can test your circuit whilst the PCB is in one piece, then to create a soft circuit, simply snap off whichever part of the circuit you want and hook it back up to the main board via conductive thread. Amazing! On the board you get an Attiny 8-pin microcontroller, piezo speaker, LED, photo-transistor, and a touch sensitive button. 10 feet of conductive thread is also included. All documentation is provided over on Instructables with some examples of soft circuits that can be made with this ingenious little kit.
