Guys from Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories have released 2nd version of their Peggy LED display kit. It is a 25×25 LED display board which is capable to display various LED effects, output text and even animation with individual LED addressing.

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This is quite smart construction allowing to drive any number of LEDs (from one to [...]

This is really great video about SMD soldering using simple and cheap equipment that most electronics hobbyist can find at home. This 9 min video tutorial prepared by CuriousInventor includes up-close shots of fine pitch soldering such SMD elements as 603 resistor, PLCC< 44 pin QFP, 208 pin fine-pitch QFP. Also there are few SMD [...]

Have you missed a New Year party? Dont worry you can make it UP with these fun projects made of LEDs andother cheap materials. Joe Utson has compiled several LED and fiber optic projects the average Joe can create easily and get ready for the party. One of them is simple LED sign made of [...]

Florin from YouriTronics have taken a video where he shows how to make very simple WiFi signal reflector and this way increase the signal level to one direction. For this he used soda can cut in half. Probably everybody know parabolic antennas and ho do they reflect signal from focal point. If WiFi antenna is [...]

I heard about this method an decided to try with may board. I needed to replace Atmega128 chip, but didn’t have hot air solder for desoldering IC. I tried this weird desoldering technique and I can say, that I satisfied. Tracks and other parts were saved.
Watch a video:

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Atmega128 desolder using simple lighter.
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Now my Atmega128 [...]

This is nice video overview of the tools required to do soldering on the workbench. A solder station with wet sponge, flux core 60/40 solder, solder sucker, wire and wire strip tools.

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solder tools overview
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This video demonstrates how to solder 0805 capacitor or resistor.

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Soldering SMD 0805 Capacitor
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The IC is a FT232RL from http://www.ftdichip.com/. It is a USB to Uart converter.

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Soldering SMD SSOP-28
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Soldering a 16 pin SO-16 or SOIC IC Video demonstration. Wear anti-static wristband while doing this ;). The chip being soldered is a DS1805 digital potentiometer from www.maximic.com

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Soldering SOIC 16
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Surface mount soldering of a SOT-23 transistor.

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Soldering SMD Transistor
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