Tutorial: Soldering 103 PCB Soldering: Building an Arduino Protoshield

[Oneslowz28]

In this tutorial I will cover soldering through hole components to a PCB. To do this I will be setting up a Arduino Proto-Shield remixed from Seeed Studio. So heat up your iron and get ready to melt some metal.

Warning: A soldering iron produces very high temperatures and can cause sever burns and even start fires. TheBestCaseScenario.com takes no responsibility for your personal safety if you chose to use this tutorial in your own project. Furthermore TheBestCaseScenario.com can not be held accountable for any damage to your person or property due to your use of this tutorial.

What you will need.

• Soldering Iron
• Solder (leaded or lead free will work)
• Arduino ProtoShield Remixed from Seeedstudio.com
• Helping hands
• Self closing tweezers
• Solder sponge and copper pot scrubber (optional)
• Solder sucker or solder wick
• Needle nose pliers

Building the SeeedStudio Arduino Protoshield Remixed.

Now that we have tip cleaning and care covered lets get down to business and build the proto shield. The first thing we need to do is check the kit and make sure we have all the components necessary. We wont use all of this in the tutorial but we should still check.

• PCB
• Break Away Headers - male 40 pin X2
• Break Away Headers - Female 40 pins X1
• Rubber ring string X1
• Break Away Headers - female 8 pin X3
• Break Away Headers - female 6 pin X1
• Break Away Headers - DUAL male 40 pin for Arduino/Seeeduino X1
• 2X3 female pin header X1
• 2X3 male pin header X1
• Mini Push Button Switch X4
• USB Female Type B Connector X1
• Vertical PCB Mount Potentiometer, 10K Ohms X1
• DPDT Switch Black for Breadboard X2
• Dual color p3 LED X1
• 5mm LED red X2
• 5mm LED green X2
• Resistor 1kΩ X4
• Resistor 10kΩ X2

I like to lay everything out and take inventory. Not all of this will be used in this tutorial but Seeed Studio included plenty of components for a variety of configurations.

When soldering on a PCB (Printed Circuit Board) it is always easiest to solder the smallest components first. So we will start with the resistors labled R1 and R2 on the PCB silk screen.

R1 and R2 are both 1k 1/8w resistors. You can identify a 1k resistor by its color bands. Brown, Black, Red. The Gold denotes it is a 5% tolerance.

Bend the leads so they fit perfectly in the holes and sit flush against the PCB.

R1 is for the Pin 13 LED and R2 is for the power LED.

To hold the resistors in place for soldering, I like to bend the leads in opposite directions.

When soldering the resistor's leads to the PCB you want to apply heat to both the pad and the lead at the same time with the soldering iron. Be sure to apply the solder to the opposite side and not directly to the iron. You want the solder to be melted by the hot pad and component leads.

The resistor leads all soldered up.

Next we will solder the LED's to the board.

To make a long story short the long lead of the LED is the Anode and the short lead is the Cathode. Some LEDs have leads that are the same length and you can usually tell what is what by the flat spot on the bottom edge of the LED. It will always be on the Cathode side of the LED. On a PCB the LED is marked on the silk screen by a circle with a flat spot. The hole closest to the flat spot is for the Cathode.

Again bend the leads to hold the LEDs in place.

Up next is the ISP headers. These are usually a pain to hold in place for soldering. Some people use a dab of super glue to hold them in place. I just bend the leads on opposite ends on opposite rows in opposite directions. Note that you can not do this with stack-able headers.

We will also add the reset switch. It's leads are preformed and will "lock" into the PCB.

In this shot you can see the leads of the button "locked in" and the ISP header pins sticking out.

Partialy soldered up. Pin Headers sink away a lot of heat so make sure you apply the heat for a few seconds longer than you would for other components to avoid a bad joint like I have on the two pins here.

Here I purposely bridged 2 of the pins with solder so I can show you how to fix this if it happens to you.

I use a solder sucker to remove the excess solder. You can pick these up at Radio shack for a few bucks or any online electronics store for about the same price. The same effect could be acheived with solder wick or a skilled swipe of a clean soldering iron tip.

Now it is time to move on to the pin headers that will connect the shield to the Arduino.

Here is a little trick I like to use when soldering headers to an Arduino shield. Slide the long end of the header pins into your arduino or in my case seeeduino.

Headers fully inserted.

Then place your shield PCB on top of the headers for soldering.

Ready for soldering.

When soldering the header pins on your joint should looks something like this. The solder should slope up to the top of the pin. If it looks more like a blob, use your solder sucker to remove the excess solder and try again.

Now lets solder on the female headers to the top of the shield. Again I like to bend the lead on each end to hold it to the PCB while soldering.

A shot of them from the bottom. To keep the female headers aligned I used some spare male headers.

Soldered up. A quick note here. These pins are very small and are surrounded by ABS plastic, so be careful with how long you apply heat for as you could melt the plastic onto the inside pin and render the header useless.

The Arduino Protoshield Remixed from Seeed Studio comes with a USB port. This is a pretty cool feature and will allow you to add separate USB connectivity to your projects.

This is a tricky one to hold flush against the PCB. The easiest thing to do is use some long clamping tweezers.

Another shot of the tweezers.

The first thing to solder is the large metal tabs that reinforce the USB port mounting.

Now solder the USB ports pins.

The Arduino Protoshield Remixed also comes with a 10k pot. This is a very handy feature to include on a prototyping shield. It is a bit tricky to solder and connect to female headers though. Again we will use the clamping tweezers to old it in place.

Solder the pins.

Now using a hobby knife cut 3 individual female headers. Be careful and do not slice your finger off.

Place the female headers into the small holes above the pot. In this shot you can see I also added female headers to the I2C and UART pins. That option is completely up to you.

Solder the pins in and use a bit of solder to bridge the gap between the Pot and Female header pins.

On the bottom left corner of the PCB you can see I populated the 5V, Gnd, and 3.3V rails with female and male headers. These extra connections will come in handy when prototyping.

Another shot of the power connections.

Shot of the bottom.

Here is the Arduino Protoshield Remixed fully populated.

And from the back.

Now I am going to add a mini breadboard for further prototyping ability.

These mini breadboards attach to the PCB by 2 sided tape.

Just stick it to the PCB making sure not to cover up any of the Arduino Pin labeling.

From the top.

Now to test the protoshield. Wire up a LED to pin 13 and load the blink sketch to the Arduino. If the LED blinks then the board works.

Here are the parts left over. Extra parts are always a good thing and when it comes to electronics they are welcome addition.

Thanks for reading my tutorial.

[x88x]

Good tutorial. That covered several tricks that took me a while to figure out on my own.

[Oneslowz28]

Thanks!!

Yea I tried to add as many tricks as I could but there are still some I left out or forgot to write about. This should be a good starting point for all the soldering noobies though.

[mDust]

This should be a good starting point for all the soldering noobies though.

Me...and yes it is. Thanks for posting it.

[dr.walrus]

Might be worth noting that, though there weren't any transistors on this project, you have to be very careful to avoid overheating, and preferably use a heatsink

[Oneslowz28]

That is a good point. The self clamping tweezers I used to hold the USB port down work very well as a heatsink. That's the primary reason I bought them.