Gikfun LED Chaser Kit Soldering Practice Kit PCB Board for School Learning Project EK1974

The media could not be loaded. I’ve recently gotten the itch to learn how to solder. I started soldering coax connectors for ham radio and there was just something about the soldering part I really liked. This is probably the fifth soldering kit I’ve purchased from Amazon and it probably has more actual soldering joints than all the others combined. It’s not as practical or as usable as the calculator, fm radio, or clock but those always left me wanting more to solder but this kit finally satisfied that desired. I worked on it throughout the day and probably spent 2-3 hours total on it.TIP: If you want nice straight flush components, only solder one joint per component. Then, reheat the joint while pushing up on the component/led until it’s flush. Remove the soldering iron and hold in place for another two seconds before removing your finger. Have fun!

I definitely got better at soldering from assembling this. Also learned different ways to hold components in while working on it. I always appreciate when a company includes extras (LEDs and a transistor in this case) because accidents happen. The board is fun to play with and show off to friends.

I wish someone would just sell the PCB. I have tons of through hole parts which I would love to use for things like this. Good product but expensive when you look at the parts list.

Nice kit. Tons of solder practice. I recommend putting IC2 in before the LEDS and transistors because space gets pretty tight. Also populating and soldering one row of LEDs at a time was helpful. Things to look out for are when you clip the leads make sure nothing is bridged. I used pretty dull flush cutters, but a nice sharp pair of diagonal cutters would be helpful.

I assembled two of these over the last few days. The first one I think I messed up as 6 of the LED's did not illuminate and I am pretty sure it was my mistake. The second one I assembled and I was much more careful with my soldering using a finer tip and it worked out perfectly. It is fun to build and really helps with dialing in your soldering skills. The finished product is an adjustable light chase and is exactly what the product claims to be and I think it was well worth the money. I would recommend a good solder sucker in case you make a mistake for easy solder removal/cleanup.

The media could not be loaded. I'm a hobbyist electronics enthusiast. I treat electronics projects like lego sets, following instructions to build cool gadgets. This was a really fun, simple soldering project that I turned into a portable stim toy for my 9 year old son. The instructions are simple and easy to follow. The project does require some skill in soldering. I recommend a needle tip for your soldering iron to help get the tiny joints soldered neatly. With a project box, a lipo battery, a discharge/overcharge protection module, a boost converter and small amount of knowledge, you can convert this into a portable version. Out of the box, it just plugs into a standard USB block and works great like that.

This is an excellent product for those who are interested in electronic devices, for children who are interested in learning about electronics and for those who are interested in their electronic kit building skills. I do have one suggestion for anyone who is interested in purchasing this kit. You should purchase a small kit with DIP sockets. It is better to place the integrated circuits into sockets so that if they ever need to be replaced it will be easy to complete the step. You need to have two 8 pin sockets and two 16 pin sockets.

It was missing the 3.3k resistor, but I had a 10k and a 5k laying around that I was able to put together to make a 3.3k resistor. Besides the missing part it is a pretty cool kit