GikfunElectronic LED Flashing Lights Soldering Practice Board PCB DIY Kit EK1874

The circuit design and board is really good, to the point I hardly needed to refer to the instructions, the solder pads are quite small so a fine tip is required, I did this in an evening but I'm too impatient to make it last, there's a LOT of soldering due to the amount of LED's, I found it easier doing 1 row at a time otherwise it gets messy.I had a bit of a game soldering the negative LED leg onto the tiny pad, I would advise adding some flux to make it easier but I managed without.In theory you don't need a multi-meter as the amount of resistors makes sense, though the odd single one was a little confusing, if you follow the instructions and fit the rest then there's only one place left for it to go which is: R1.It works a charm and the little potentiometer lets you vary the speed of the animation, the USB cable option made it easier than faffing around with 4 x AA batteries so I didn't solder the holder (I'm a poet!).The list of uses once it's finished:123Nope I can't think of one but it was really fun to put together and see it working.A great value kit with a ton of parts.

I used this as a hobby kit to improve my basic soldering skills. I got it to work the first time through with only two cold solders on LED's that were easy to fix. I took my time working on this project since it requires around 250 solder joints. The finished project is very satisfying and learning to solder is also very rewarding. I would consider this an intermediate skill level kit for basic through hole soldering. Note that the IC's are mounted directly on the PCB without sockets so be careful not to overheat the pins while soldering. I have had good luck with doing the pins from opposite ends of the IC's and waiting a little while after doing one or two of them.

Ok

Going to be building a guitar pedal soon so thought I'd do a quick refresher kit to get my eye in. Like a lot of these type of kits it's a pulsing light display driven by a 555 timer and Johnson decade counter, with a pot to trim for clock speed.Everything comes jumbled in one bag and there was some oxidation on the IC pins, but nothing that affected the final build. Had one faulty LED and another was cased the wrong way around, as confirmed with a multimeter.It's a tight fit, the LEDs are smaller than the usual 5mm fare, more like 3mm, and the pads are absolutely tiny; I've seen bigger 1206 pads. They also don't supply IC sockets which is a little cheap and means you need to be mindful of heating the chip when soldering.Overall it's a decent little kit, I just feel it didn't have to be quite so cramped, and sockets would have been useful for a raw beginner trying this.

I enjoyed putting this together, the only reason I did 4 stars was because the directions were awful. I had better luck just looking at the picture on amazon of the finished product. But it was fun and helped me get better at soldering.