The work on the board continued this afternoon during class.  The crooked component had to be heated, then readjusted to straighten it out.  The only other problem, with the work from the weekend, was a few solder joints were too thinly soldered.  All I needed to do was add some extra solder to each of them.

Once the main components were set on the board, some external parts needed to be added.  These parts were the power cord, the on/off toggle switch, and the peripheral cord for attaching to a computer.  The power cord was the first.  All that needed to be done to it, was the ends had to be thinned down and slid into the slots to be tightened down.

The power cord was then checked by hooking up a 9.6 V battery and monitoring the voltage reading across the circuit.  If it was about 5 V, then it was time to attach to on/off toggle switch.  This was easily done by cutting two lengths of wire and soldering the ends to the switch and to the board.

Before both ends were soldered, a sheath was slid over both wires.  These sheathes were slid over top the ends that were soldered to the switch.  Once in place, they were heated so that they would shrink down over the wires and joints.

The last bit for the day was to find a way to hook up the cord that would allow communications with a computer.  To accomplish this, a cord with a plug was provided (see picture below).  What I had to do was find the proper wires to connect to the board.  I needed to locate the wires for ports 2, 3, and 5.  This was accomplished by using a volt meter and touching the ends to find which wire came from which port.  As you can see from the picture, they were the yellow, orange, and brown wires respectively.  Once separated from the wire bundle, ends were crimped on them and the cord was then ready to be tested.  The testing will take place later.

This is the final result of the last few days of work on the board.

The next step in building our robot for this semester was to solder the components to the board. For me, this was the first time I have ever soldered. It was not too bad. The first picture is of the work station where the board was constructed.

The final result ended with all components connected.  I did not cut the long wires coming from the components yet.  I am going to wait until the professor can inspect them.  If I messed up, it is better to be safe than sorry.  There are also a few singe marks on the board.  They are visible in the following picture.

The final picture shows the completed front of the board.  It is difficult to see, but one component did end up crooked.  Once again, this is a situation in which I will wait until class tomorrow to fix it.  Mainly because I do not know how to undo the solder joints.

Overall, with this being my first experience holding a soldering iron, it was not a bad one.  Soldering is not as difficult as I believed it would be.  As for if it was done correctly, well, the professor will determine that.

This is the first blog of the semester for RET 160.  Today, during class time, we were to begin soldering the components on the boards.  Instead of starting to solder, I began by redrilling a few of the holes on the board.  There were six that needed enlarged and three that needed slightly enlarged to one side in order to make the components fit.

The five holes easiest to see are on the bottom right hand side of the board.  You can see the light colored edges.