Building a Heatermeter in 2 minutes!
- Thread starter Peter F
- Start date
This afternoon I made a short time lapse video of the building process of a heatermeter.
Just for the record, I do my own stunts...........
I just recently had a post asking if there were any videos like this. Thanks for the upload! Any chance we could get a raw video for people that don't have much soldering experience?
Ah. Gotcha. I've never soldered before so a little scared to jump into it. I bought the HM kit with TC PCB already installed so I don't have to do anything with that at least. Was hoping to find a step by step video for assembly/soldering. Yours has been the closest video for assembly I've found yet so I will try to go off that and pictures.
RalphTrimble
TVWBB Diamond Member
This video shows building the SMD HM board, so it really has very little in common with a standard through hole HM build. The through hole parts are much easier to solder than the tiny SMD parts.
I would suggest you watch some general soldering tutorials on youtube first, and then follow the build guide Bryan posted. It pretty much goes step by step, a few similar components at a time. One comment I have heard about Bryan's build guide though, the resistor color codes may be difficult to match to the resistors you have... so match your resistor values to the values marked on the board. (I'm wondering if Bryan identifies the resistor values for you in the kit? If not then measuring the resistance with a multimeter is probably the easiest way to identify them)
I generally place few resistors in the board then solder them and clip the leads, then do a few more... then do the capacitors the same. The resistors and the little yellow match head like capacitors have no polarity so it doesn't matter which way you insert them in the board, the larger can capacitors are polarized and have the - (negative) side marked on them. The diodes have a bar on them to mark their polarity and the transistors have a flat side, these details are all outlined on the board so orient those parts the way you see them on the board. All the smaller transistors are the same, except there is one MCP-1700-33 voltage regulator that looks the same as the transistors, so make sure to get that in the right place.
It's really not all that hard to do, the LCD mounting is probably the most challenging part...
I would suggest you watch some general soldering tutorials on youtube first, and then follow the build guide Bryan posted. It pretty much goes step by step, a few similar components at a time. One comment I have heard about Bryan's build guide though, the resistor color codes may be difficult to match to the resistors you have... so match your resistor values to the values marked on the board. (I'm wondering if Bryan identifies the resistor values for you in the kit? If not then measuring the resistance with a multimeter is probably the easiest way to identify them)
I generally place few resistors in the board then solder them and clip the leads, then do a few more... then do the capacitors the same. The resistors and the little yellow match head like capacitors have no polarity so it doesn't matter which way you insert them in the board, the larger can capacitors are polarized and have the - (negative) side marked on them. The diodes have a bar on them to mark their polarity and the transistors have a flat side, these details are all outlined on the board so orient those parts the way you see them on the board. All the smaller transistors are the same, except there is one MCP-1700-33 voltage regulator that looks the same as the transistors, so make sure to get that in the right place.
It's really not all that hard to do, the LCD mounting is probably the most challenging part...
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Bryan Mayland
TVWBB Hall of Fame
2 Minutes is all it takes eh? That's pretty awesome, a nice variety of techniques here too, from drag soldering the CPU, hot rework for the passives, coat and reflow for the caps, to the regular through hole stuff. I'm going to make videos for the HeaterMeter v4.3 instructions, as well as use the resistors that match the new specs (originally the v4.2 used mostly blue metal film resistors) so it is less confusing. Not that that helps 4.2 people but a great video, Peter!
That's pretty awesome, a nice variety of techniques here too, from drag soldering the CPU, hot rework for the passives, coat and reflow for the caps, to the regular through hole stuff. I'm going to make videos for the HeaterMeter v4.3 instructions, as well as use the resistors that match the new specs (originally the v4.2 used mostly blue metal film resistors) so it is less confusing. Not that that helps 4.2 people but a great video, Peter!I most recently made one as well. One I found on thingiverse. Where did you get your carbon filters?