Friday Product Post: Solder Where? Solder There!
Plenty of soldering kits are now available for you to learn or practice on!
Hello hello hello! We have a pretty "solder-tastic" Friday Product Post in store for you this week. On this fine Friday we have six new soldering kits that range in difficulty and part count! These kits include two versions of the Day of the Geek skull badge, the Unigeek unicorn badge, a kit that lets you make a neat lighthouse, a night light that can tell when it gets dark, and a beating heart pendant! On top of these soldering kits, we've also revved the SparkFun Tinker Kit to include updated buttons, resistors and motor drivers, to make it easier and more accessible to new users!
And as if new soldering kits weren't enough, we've put some of our most popular sensors on sale for this weekend only! Check out the sale here!
Happy Friday everyone; let's jump in and take a look!
Say feliz Día de los Muertos, every day!
The Day of the Dead only comes around once a year, but what if you could celebrate it any day you want? With this Day of the Geek soldering kit, you will be able to learn the basics of soldering by assembling either a white or black light-up skull badge! Each Day of the Geek kit takes about 5-10 minutes to assemble with basic soldering materials. Say no to sugar skulls and yes to solder skulls instead!
Hello, everypony!
Get a little magical with your soldering skills! The Unigeek is a beginners' soldering kit that teaches you PTH and SMD soldering while you assemble a light-up unicorn badge with a color changing eye. Each Unigeek kit takes about 5-15 minutes to assemble with basic soldering materials, and yes, the PCB in this kit really is rainbow colored out of the bag!
Hashtag 2 Spooky Lighthouse!
A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor, so start learning how to solder with this kit! With this Lighthouse Soldering Kit you will be able to use your intermediate skills to assemble an isophase lighthouse! Each Lighthouse kit takes about 10-20 minutes to assemble with basic soldering materials. Fear not all you lovers of Lovecraft and occulting lighthouses, by changing the value of the resistors you can change the flashing pattern!
Scare the dark away!
The night is dark and full of terrors, so why not light it up with this handy little night light that adjusts its brightness depending on how dark the environment is? The Night Light is an intermediate-level soldering kit designed to help you improve your soldering by building a light-activated night light cube! Each Night Light Soldering Kit takes about 10-30 minutes to assemble with basic soldering materials; the hardest part is assembling the housing.
Be still my beating heart! With the heART Surface Mount Soldering Kit you will be able to learn about SMD soldering by assembling a beating heart pendant! Each heART kit takes about 20-40 minutes to assemble depending on your skill level. This little kit provides a great learning tool to help you practice and improve your overall soldering skills!
(We didn't finish the video for this kit in time, but we do plan on having it to release sometime next week. Stay tuned!)
The SparkFun Tinker Kit (STK) is a great way to get started with programming and hardware interaction with the Arduino programming language. The STK is the newest version of the former SparkFun Mini Inventor's Kit, blended with elements of our educator MESA kit. Each SparkFun Tinker Kit includes everything you need to complete 11 circuits that will teach you how to blink an LED, read sensors, drive servos and more. You don't need any previous programming or electronics experience to use this kit.
This version of the Tinker Kit updates the multicolored buttons, resistors and motor driver, making the entire product easier to use with breadboards!
That is all for this edition of the Friday Product Post but don't fret, we have another SUPER SPECIAL product post set to go live Sunday morning, so be sure to check back then for three new products! As always, we can't wait to see what you make with these products! Shoot us a tweet @sparkfun, or let us know on Instagram or Facebook. We’d love to see what projects you’ve made!
Thanks for stopping by. We'll see you soon with even more fantastic new products!
Day of the Geek video really needs to be in Spanish with English subtitles!!!! :- )
Si, estoy de acuerdo !
I would like to see soldering articles on no-lead solder. There are some challenges, especially to those of us new to no-lead. Lead-based solder is on the way out, and for any commercialized project, RoHS compliance has already become an important consideration. And for non-commercial projects, who knows how long lead-based solder will be available?
"From viewers like YOU" -- not like me, Chris. ;-) I might have been interested around 1970, but today I think my soldering skills are a tad bit beyond these kits... ;-) I'm sure there are folks at SparkFun, as well as other readers, who have better skills than I do. (I won't attempt a BGA by hand, even with my hot air "rework" station, nor do I like to do any SMD smaller than 0402.)
Anyway, I think that these ARE great for beginners -- and it's nice to be able to get something "useful" out of soldering practice. A lot better than the ones I remember when I was learning that you'd end up with just a "random circuit" that didn't do anything!
Great post for the "redundant" holiday (aren't all Fridays good?) (Please, that's meant as a joke!)