Soldering Assignment

Description

The soldering assignment is a basic soldering exercise that ensures all ECE 445/ME 470 students understand how to solder surface-mount and through-hole devices. Students will be provided with the necessary PCB, components, solder, flux, etc. The details of the soldering assignment can be found in the assignment sheet.

Your end product should look similar to the following. You will create a small device that blinks an LED at varying frequencies when the button is pressed, based on a potentiometer reading.

Soldering Assignment Image

Below is a series of soldering tutorials. The critical ingredient that you need to make your life easier while surface mount soldering (and through-hole too) is flux. There is liquid, water-soluble flux available in the lab. If you can't find it or don't know what it looks like, ask a lab staff member or TA for help.

Requirements and Grading

The soldering assignment is worth 10 points and is graded via inspection by a TA or Lab Staff member. Students are allowed to make as many attempts as necessary to complete the assignment.

Submission and Deadlines

The soldered PCB must be presented to a course staff member before the deadline listed on the Course Calendar.

Video Tutorials

Below are a few public video tutorials on Soldering. There is also a text description of how to solder on the soldering assignment doc linked above.

Through-hole (THT) and surface-mount (SMD) soldering tutorial:

Tutorial on using the various types of flux:

Tutorial on using wick to remove solder:

Tutorial on using a heat gun:

Fountain show

Dingyi Feng, Tianli Ling, Zhelun Lu, Shibo Zhang

Featured Project

## Team

- Dingyi Feng(dingyif2)

- Tianli Ling(tling3)

- Zhelun Lu(zhelunl2)

- Shibo Zhang(shiboz2)

## Problem:

A fountain show on campus can make students feel more relaxed after class. However, some fountain shows only have monotonous, stiff, and single actions. Besides, they cannot automatically generate action and light effects. Compared with large fountain shows, small and medium-sized fountain shows have the advantage of time and space. In most cases, a large fountain show only has preloaded music which cannot be decided by audiences. Large fountain shows also require people to design the action and light effects for each music, which takes lots of time and effort. Compared with the large fountain show, our small fountain show will be more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly. During the COVID-19 pandemic, large fountain shows might result in large crowds gathering, but a small fountain show can reduce the risk of infection.

## Solution Overview:

Our fountain show would be built at a pool on the sourthwest of the main lake on campus. By manually programing, the fountain show could realize changing lighting effects and movements. Besides, our fountain show could also identify the music which was imported into our system, and automatically generate the lighting effects and movements with the music. If time permits, we will strengthen the human-computer interaction of our product. To be specific, people could scan the QR code or use our online system to choose the music they want, so that they can enjoy the fountain show at any time.

## Solution Components:

### Control Subsystem:

- Music colleccting and analyzing subsystem: Computer that can import music signals and analyze them.

- Converting subsystem: After music signal is analyzed, we need computer to convert useful signals into digital signals. Digital signals will be used to control LEDs and other mechanical subsystems.

### Mechanical Subsystem:

- Pump Subsystem: Water pump that can pump water from the lake. Valves will be used to control water’s flow rate of each nozzle.

- Lighting Subsystem: LEDs are needed to light our fountains. They are controlled by microprocessor on PCB. Their brightness and color can be changed with music.

- Motor Subsystem: Two motors are needed for each fountain nozzle to control the movements. The motors are controlled by microprocessor on PCB.

### Power subsystem:

- The pump is drived by DC power (12V 20~30A). PCB and computer will be drived by USB (5V 1A). Full module power supply with 12V and 5V output is needed.

## Criterion for Success:

- If it can successfully identify a piece of music and convert it to electrical signals that we need in controlling LED’s lighting and nozzle’s moving.

- If the whole system can work stably for a long time and whether it is safe to use without electric leakage or other problems.

- If music playing, fountain movements and LED lights are synchronized.

- If the fountain system is neat and whether the fountain performance is ornamental enough.