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The Construct is RIT's student makerspace, encompassing a wide range of maker activities, including electronics. Many students are interested in working on electronics but do not have the requisite background or experience to get started, and it is not something they can glean from their normal curriculum. Therefore, The Construct has tried to run a number of electronics-focused classes in the past, primarily focused on the basics of Arduino and soldering. While the Arduino sections were well-received, the soldering classes usually fell a bit short.
An analysis of the soldering classes found that the culprit was the kits themselves being used. The kits consisted of only a few large, easy-to-solder parts. Furthermore, once assembled, the kits served little to no purpose. While kits did exist that'd give more parts for more experience and would be more interesting/useful once complete, they were prohibitively expensive.
In 2022, The Construct began development on a series of soldering kits to use in classes for RIT students. The goals were to make high-quality, well-documented, low-cost kits that students would not only enjoy assembling but also have fun with or otherwise use after the class was done.
This soldering kit is the third in the first series of soldering kits The Construct developed, and is intended to be the most advanced of the three. It is targeted toward students who already have an understanding of THT soldering techniques, but want to expand their knowledge into SMD soldering. The kit provides a number of common SMD components in a wide array of packages, as well as explores why some parts are SMD while some parts are THT.
When completed, the kit serves as an edge-lit acrylic display piece. Students can take advantage of The Construct's non-electronic resources, namely the laser cutter, to engrave an acrylic blank with an image of their choice, such as a favorite sports team's logo or a reference from a video game, to integrate with the electronics they soldered.
When plugged in and with a piece of acrylic installed, the display will illuminate the acrylic from the edge with a series of RGB LEDs, catching the engraving and illuminating it. A series of knobs and buttons on the back of the system allows the user to set a desired color/brightness, or to change between multiple modes of operation. Most notable of these is a sound-reactive mode where the intensity of the LEDs react to ambient noise intensity, allowing the display to seemingly react to the music you are playing.
This project is licensed under the Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. For more information, click here.
If you are interested in using this project under a different license (e.g. for commercial use), please contact us.