Sheema & Claire: Functioning Electronics

After getting all the materials and electronic pieces we need, it was time to put put our arduino to use. But, in order to get it working we needed to solder. Soldering was something neither Claire nor I had ever done, and when we walked into Metrix on Wednesday night, we looked like terrified students unsure of what we were doing. We need to solder the microphone switch to the arduino board, and the relay and relay components to the relay board.

Learning how to solder.

Learning to solder was a valuable experience. Walking into the tiny solder room at metrix we were introduced to the tools, shown a demonstration, and then left to finish the job ourselves. At first we were both hesitant, not wanting to damage the relay or arduino, but after a couple of tries it got easier to know when to stop heating and applying solder, and what the best angles were to get the best results.

We stripped wires to solder them to a the relay board.

After we finished soldering the relay board at Metrix we tested it out to make sure that it still worked and nothing was wrong with the relay (the test passed).

After getting the okay on our relay we set out to test it with our arduino and pump to make sure it all worked. We built a box for our relay board to keep ourselves and our relay safe.

Relay, relay box, arduino, breadboard, pump all connected to test our design.

We were super excited at our set up and soldering job, but sadly we connected to arduino to power and nothing... we tried again, and again, and still nothing. Then came the daunting task of testing all the circuits to see what the problem could be. One by one we test different components of both boards, until finally the only thing left was the relay. Then it was official, the relay was bad. Apparently it is common for relays to be defective, but it was till dissapointing. All the time and energy we put into soldering the relay and now we were faced with this problem. Then the solder sucking began.

Examining our relay board.

Solder sucking.

The tool I am holding in the image above is a solder sucker, a nifty little tool that when placed just right sucks the solder right off the board, allowing us to disconnect the relay. Using the solder sucker was a two person job, one person to heat up the solder and the other to use the solder sucker on top of it really fast before it dried to get the solder off. 

In the end we managed to get all the solder off the relay, and then began soldering a new relay onto the relay board. Once we were done soldering on the new relay we attached all the components together again and tested them, luckily it was a success and the pump turned on!! It was a long process of debugging, but we eventually got to the outcome we had been hoping for, and learned a lot along the way.