Solder Heart

So Jimmie Rodgers came to stay with Michael a few weeks back. As a parting gift he left an Open Heart v2.0 kit. So here I am... just back from a  whirlwin road trip, resonantly a new grad, under employed, and not really wanting to start studying for my boards quite yet. Michael is out of town, riding a bike in a suite and meeting with attorney types in Philly. So Sunday night finds me at PS1with Eric, soldering iron in hand ready to build my first kit.

Some years ago when I was living in Florance I took a jewelery making class and did a bit of soldering there... but somehow electronics soldering seems different to me. More magical, more potential.

So to prep I watched some videos to learn stuff and things. Jimmie had a link to a pretty excellent one on his site http://blip.tv/make/learn-how-to-solder-skill-building-workshop-130343

Other then that I had Eric on hand to make sure I didn't burn my eyes out.       

      I quickly learned that I was quite bad at cutting the leads flush. However all and all it came together and it was time for the programing. Jimmie wrote a pretty killer simple animation program that allowed me to design how the LED's would flash in a frame by frame. I kinda haphazardly designed a pattern and borrowed an Arduino and off we went.

 

Then craziness erupted.  I think I need to check my pining and the generated processing code. It might be a bad cable. The arduino I was borrowing had to go night night. Hopefully I will be able to get my hands on another one in the next few days and re test. Lets cross our fingers for blinking lights in the correct sequence coming soon!