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:

Digital Controlled LED Rotating Display System

Guanshujie Fu, Yichi Jin, Keyi Shen, Chentai (Seven) Yuan

Featured Project

# TEAM MEMBERS

Chentai Yuan (chentai2)

Guanshujie Fu (gf9)

Keyi Shen (keyis2)

Yichi Jin (yichij2)

# TITLE OF THE PROJECT

Digital Controlled LED Rotating Display System

# PROBLEM

By visual persistence phenomenon, we can display any images and strings with a rotating LED array. Many devices based on this idea have been developed. However, there are some common issues to be solved. First, the images or strings to be displayed are pre-defined and cannot be changed in a real-time way. Second, the wired connection between some components may limit the rotation behavior, and harm the quality of display. Some economical wireless communication technologies and new ways to connect components can be applied to achieve a better display and real-time image update.

# SOLUTION OVERVIEW

We aim at developing a digital controlled LED rotating display system. A servo motor is controlled to drive the stick with one row of LED to do circular rotation. The connection between LEDs, control circuit, motor and other components should be simple but firm enough to suppose good display and high-speed rotation. Moreover, there is another part to handle users’ input and communicate with the display part via Bluetooth to update images in a real-time and wireless way.

# SOLUTION COMPONENTS

## Subsystem1: Display Subsystem

- LED Array that can display specific patterns.

- Controller and other components that can timely turn the status of LEDs to form aimed patterns.

## Subsystem2: Drive Subsystem

- Servo motor that drive of the LED array to do circular rotation.

- Controller that communicates with the motor to achieve precise rotation and position control.

- An outer shell that has mechanisms to fix the motor and LED array.

## Subsystem3: Logic and Interface Subsystem

- Input peripherals like keyboard to receive users’ input.

- A FPGA board for high-level logics to handle input, give output and communicate with other subsystems.

- Wireless communication protocol like Bluetooth used in communication.

- VGA display hardware offering Graphical User Interface.

# CRITERION OF SUCCESS

- Users can successfully recognize the real-time patterns to be displayed.

- It achieves the precise rotation and position control of motor.

- The motor can drive the LED array and any necessary components to rotate stably and safely.

- The LED array is under real-time control and responds rapidly.

- The communication between components has low latency and enough bandwidth.

# DISTRIBUTION OF WORK

- Chentai Yuan(ME): Mechanisms and servo motor control.

- Guanshujie Fu(CompE): Logic and Interface design and keyboard & VGA display implementation.

- Keyi Shen(EE): Wireless communication and servo motor control.

- Yichi Jin(EE): Circuit design, keyboard & VGA display implementation.