After building my first PCB a while back and starting to attempt to use it, I decided that the smart thing to do would be to finish build #2, which is a Bus Pirate Demo Board.  This demo board has a handful of chips that can be used to test a Bus Pirate (or in my case, a Bus Pirate Shield): 5 EEPROMs, a temperature sensor, a digital-analog converter, and a real-time clock.

My biggest hold-ups were ordering parts… I certainly have a bit to learn about SMD sizes, as I ordered some that were a bit small:

Too small!!!

Finally, after a few extra parts orders, I finished it.  I’m getting better at soldering SMD devices, although I should probably invest in a soldering station with adjustable temperature control and a better assortment of tips.  My Radio Shack iron runs very hot.

The completed board.

This will make an appearance in a forthcoming blog post, particularly after I get more into using the Bus Pirate Arduino Shield.

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A few months ago I had the luck of winning a free PCB from Dangerous Prototypes via twitter.  I finally got around to building it.  Below are some pictures of the build.  Please no comments on my soldering skills – I’m still a novice at SMD components.  This is the second kit I’ve done with SMD components, and the other was only a handful of SMDs and mostly through-hole.

There is one part missing – I didn’t install the connector for the test leads.  I forgot to buy it when I bought the rest of the components (and it wasn’t actually the only thing I forgot).

This was a fun build, but it did underscore my need for a new soldering iron for SMD items and a new tip for my general purpose soldering iron (which is really too hot for SMD, but so far I haven’t burned anything up).

Now all I need to do is figure out how to use this thing! 🙂

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