Nice review of the Blinky POV SMT kit by tronixstuff

John from Tronixstuff recently reviewed our Blinky POV SMT kit, and really liked it! Here are some highlights from his review:

after my last attempt at working with hand soldering surface-mount components couldn’t really be called a success, I was looking for something to start again with. After a little searching around I found the subject for today’s review and ordered it post-haste.

you’ll want to put your own messages into the POV, and the process for doing so is very clever. Visit the programming page, and follow the instructions. Basically you enter the text into the form, set the POV to programming mode and hold it up against two squares on your monitor. The website will then blink the data which is received by the light-sensitive LEDs. Once completed, the POV will inform you of success or failure. This method of programming is much simpler than having to flash the microcontroller every time, well done Wayne and Layne.

We had a lot of fun with this simple little kit, and learned a thing or two about hand-soldering SMT. It can be done with components that aren’t too small, however doing so was an interesting challenge and the results were quite fun. So it met our needs very well. Anyone can do it with some patience and a clean soldering iron.

Continue reading… Adventures with SMT and a POV SMT Kit

Photos by John Boxall