Soldering is an important life skill. You'll never need to replace your headphones again!

Congratulations +Eric Raymond​. Now go use it at a bar Super Bowl screening and stifle the laughter at people's anger. 

Not to spam you with comments, but you can get low profile fatter electrolyte caps and swap that battery pack out for a enclosed and switched 3-AA pack so you can turn it off. Use the lithium cells they work best.

Next build, you might want to get those LEDs closer to the edge of the PCB. They tend to break off if you don't.

Great job on your first build though. 

Congratulations on this important milestone.  If asked to guess, I would have assumed you'd passed it years ago.  I hope it is all the sweeter for the waiting.  

Congrats indeed. I was totally thumb-fingered at soldering for many years, and several kits meet their death at my hands because I'd never been properly schooled, did not have the right tools, and was horribly impatient.

I got better...and took great pride in successful building an Elecraft K2 and actually having it work when I was done.

http://www.elecraft.com/k2_page.htm

+Eric Raymond Wow your board looks great. No more kits for you. Now you have to design your own boards.

http://www.gpleda.org/

Personally I use freebie Eagle software. I keep on trying the FLOSS stuff, but it isn't quite there for me yet. Although admittedly, I haven't tried for a while now, so I'm due to try it all again I suppose. The last time I tried KiCAD it looked really good, but it kept on crashing on me. I didn't have the time then to fool around with it either.

Fun!

Very cool. Been while since I've made anything.

invest in a cheap security camera. Has no IR cut filter.

+Paul Frederick​ KiCad stopped crashing recently, give it a spin again :-)

"...at my local pizzeria..."

Whoa. And i thought pizza was either to (A) be delivered to me from some remote (abstract) facility or (B) pulled out of the freezer and stuck in the oven. Time to go re-examine.

+Margaret Leber "I was totally thumb-fingered at soldering for many years, and several kits meet their death at my hands"

I had a couple of advantages going in:

(1) The person who taught me was very good at conveying the technique.

(2) Dim childhood memories of watching my father do electronics; at one time he had repaired TVs semi-professionally and was pretty good at the 1950s/early-1960s version of electronics.  Some of that transmitted; for example, I knew it was a good idea to twist the  battery-wire leads slightly before I tinned them.

(3) A buncha Swiss-German ancestors. You might chuckle, but the area around Zurich that my mother's  people came from has been producing a truly disproportionate share of the world's precision machinists, watchmakers, and engineers for centuries.  I think that is in part an expression of some heritable traits and I got them all.

Why do I think this?  Because I'm unreasonably good at precision work with my hands given that I have freakin' spastic palsy.  I'm patient, effective, and I enjoy it.  I wasn't surprised when teacher told me my soldering technique was excellent and consistent; it's the kind of detail work I seem to be genetically tuned for, the way some people are designed to be distance runners or swimmers.

I have long believed that in a pre-computer age I would have become an instrument-maker or a jeweller or a watchmaker or something like that.  So this didn't come out of nowhere.

+Eric Raymond forget the genetics, if you don't act thoughtfully there are no genes that will help you and that you get by fighting palsy all your life. What matters the potential if you are not a fighter...?

Swiss-Germans: fiddling with teeny - tiny itsy bitsy things for centuries! 

+André Esteves
What matters if I am not a fighter?  Well, Swiss-Germans are notoriously stubborn and persistent people too. :-)

It's too late! The hardware is clawing at your mind! All is lost!

I too just started learning how to solder, turned out to be easier than I expected.... fiddlier though.

+Eric Raymond That's cultural! I know several that mellow out in the southern European latitudes... ;) But to survive in the Alps what can you be, if not stubborn and persistent... ;)

I keep telling you there's no magic there...

Now show us the other side of the board.

Yeah, I'm with +Jay Maynard.  What does your first soldering job actually look like?  Mine was intensely funny when I pulled it out 10 years later.

+Foo Quuxman
Soldering is very easy if you understand the basics, and manage to work within those basic limitations of the craft too. Work clean. Ensure your solder joint is mechanically fastened before you solder it in some sound manner. Select an iron tip, and solder diameter, proportional to the joint you are making. Transfer heat efficiently so you use the correct amount, for the shortest period of time. Use the right amount of solder. Doing all of that should yield acceptable results.

+Paul Frederick and, if possible, use a heat sink. 

I never messed with a heat sink. If you use the minimum amount of heat needed to make a good joint, you won't need one.

+Jay Maynard Other side of board... ahh, you want to see what my solder joints look like.  Reasonable.

Unfortunately, the battery case is stuck to that side, and I'm not quite enough motivated to show off that I'm willing to destroy the sticky-sided foam holding it together.

I was well enough tutored to know what you're looking for, though.  Yes, the joints are all nice and glossy.  And of relatively uniform size, and I never had to use a solder sucker to fix overspill.

+Phil Salkie, who taught me how to do this, is a very good instructor. He not only explained technique, he explained common failure modes and the underlying materials physics.  He also showed me pictures of cold joints, explaining what they are and how they form, so I knew what to avoid.

+Rob Shinn
If you need to use a heat sink then you're doing something else wrong. Because I used to assemble circuit boards commercially, and we never used heat sinks, on anything! The common spec for heat sensitive components is 300C for 10 seconds. So I limit myself to applying heat for 3 seconds. Usually a joint will be done in half that time. But if it isn't done in 3 seconds I stop, let it cool, and fix whatever is causing the joint to fail. That is often an invisible oxide layer that was not removed. I clean everything out of hand before I solder it anyways, unless the components are very fresh.

Although it is true that the second most common rookie mistake made is the laying on of heat for too long. They get the crazy notion that if they just stick with it for a little longer things will somehow turn around for them. No, the right thing to do is stop, and repair poor preparation.

+Jay Maynard
Yes, one of the things I figured out early was how to do a joint quickly without having to bear down with the iron. Heat for a second or two, watch the solder wick around the lead and pad, and done.

I can sort of see how a heat sink would be useful if the components you're working on have a lot of thermal mass and require more heating, but for this kind of light electronics not.

+Paul Frederick You're right, of course, but here's the thing: I think of it as like a safety net. Yes, you don't need to use a heat sink, but it helps.  Especially when you're like me and you don't do this every day. If you're doing it every day all the time, then of course you're not going to use a heat sink. 

Welcome to the wonderful world if kit building.  Now go build some radios.  ;-)

He's got the whole world of Adafruit and Sparkfun to play with, where radios are chips already. We build at a higher level these days; my K2 was ages ago.

+Margaret Leber
Yeah, I'm much more interested in building things I can't get done cheaply and well as consumer electronics.

+Rob Shinn
Meh, if one is consciously aware of the fundamentals soldering just works™. Once mastered soldering should be like riding a bicycle. If you do it right everything else should fall into place. The safety net is in recognizing when things go wrong, and not persisting in that destructive behavior.

Heat sinks are for when you are making up a custom assembly, and know you're below the minimum lead length limit for a device. Or you are soldering a lead to something bulkier than you should. A special purpose device for special circumstances. Don't use your tools as crutches to compensate for poor technique.

Exactly, +Paul Frederick​. If you use a properly-sized iron for the work, you can get the job done without crutches. Yes, there are indeed times where that 250-watt gun is appropriate, like soldering on a PL-259...but the right answer there is to use a crimp connector, which is much easier to install without screwing up the cable.

+Stephan Beal
Re local pizzerias, I live in an area that's a bit special that way. The Philly/South-Jersey area has the highest density and best quality of thin-crust pizza anywhere.  (I specify thin crust because Chicago-style deep dish is a whole different thing.)

I'm not from here (I was born in Boston) so it is not regional patriotism when I tell you that if you're from anywhere else what they serve at my local pizza joint would probably qualify as the best pizza of your life. :-)  For this area, it's pretty good but not hugely exceptional.

+Eric Raymond Well, Elecraft still lets you build kits with a sensible level of participation combined with modern tech.

Folks who in the past might have built a K2 today would look at a K3:

http://www.elecraft.com/K3/K3.htm

or perhaps a KX-3

http://www.elecraft.com/KX3/kx3.htm

There's hard-core maker-kindred who do their own SMT soldering, but that's still a black art for a lot of us. 

+Stephan Beal: I actually can't speak to the pizza at Eric's local pizzeria, but they do make a good cheesesteak. Sadly, Eric can't properly appreciate a good cheesesteak due to an allergy.

+Eric Raymond
If that is your interest then you definitely have to get into board fabrication. As there are only so many kits available, but schematics are kind of like open source. There are a lot of schematics out there to compile, and hack on. What you need is this other stuff called solderless breadboard. So you can prototype circuits before you commit to final designs.

I had a real problem with the addictive nature of breadboarding at one time myself. http://i.imgur.com/yuJeZC3.jpg So you might want to be careful about that. The final stage of electronics addiction is when you get an oscilloscope.

Oscilloscopes give us the ability to see signals. You can look at a scope like a break point debugger. You can visualize the wave form at any point in a circuit with a scope. Plus just making crazy patterns on a scope is a blast.

I recently saw someone that ported Quake to an oscilloscope. They're lost!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMli33ornEU

+Paul Frederick Then he will be adding chemicals to his mad science portfolio. BEWARE WHAT YOU SUGGEST!

Seems appropriate: http://xkcd.com/968/

+Eric Raymond
I grew up in North Jersey, not too far from NYC, so I know what you're talking about. We had New Jersey style pizza where I used to live too. Not like Rays Famous, though some Rays isn't bad. Depends what Rays you're at. I think Pizza was even better though like 35 years ago. Ever eat pizza in Canada? Pick a slice up, and fold it, and they'll all look at you like you're a savage eating raw game. Hey, I'm from Jersey! A whats a matter you?

+Jay Maynard allergic to cheesesteak?! Now that is a tragedy.

+Foo Quuxman
You don't need everything. Just a few select items will do. Today people can send their Gerber files out and have them made. Which if you don't have all of the equipment is probably the best way to go.

+Rob Shinn
Nah, I just enjoy my mushroom steaks without cheese.  And usually with a good hot sauce.

+Paul Frederick I am not likely to get seriously into hardware hacking.  While it might be fun, it would be inefficient -  I have more leverage on getting stuff done as a software engineer simply because I'm so much better at that.

+Eric Raymond - what kind of pizza do you eat without cheese ??!  (I just figured you passed on the stuff altogether.)

+John D. Bell I can handle small amounts of thoroughly cooked pizza cheese, and I actually like cream cheese.  It's the fermented ones like cheddar and Brie that make me ill.

+Paul Frederick​, I never understood the whole pizza folding thing...

+Eric Raymond - responding to +Paul Frederick's comment, having a bit of hardware hack-fu in your repertoire is useful, to fill in the gaps between software elements - you could have prototyped the MACX-1 yourself, for example.

Glad your first kit was such a success.  Use your new powers well!

So when are you going to get an Arduino to play with? Even though it's not open source, I like the Teensy. The bootloader is proprietary but everything else about it is open.

+Eric Raymond
Serious? I don't know how serious I've ever been into it myself. I'm in it for the explosions! I'm just a hack in my garage with hobby electronics. But electronics is something that has always held a morbid fascination for me. To me electronics is kind of like practicing witchcraft, but slightly more reputable.

+Paul Frederick
/me is a witch already. :-)

+Eric Raymond *warlock

+Foo Quuxman - in the neo-pagan (Wiccan) community, "warlock" is a somewhat derogatory term.  Both males and females are witches.

/me is a witch, too.  o_0

+Eric Raymond
Electronics will be right up your alley then. Electronics is like practicing magic, but with some science behind it. Sometimes you may cast a spell, and all you get is a puff of blue smoke, other times bizarre mystical phenomena can happen too though.

+John D. Bell My friends would call me Mr. Wizard whenever I was playing around with my electronics projects. I don't think they meant it in the kindest way either.

Man I had to drop electronics class in 7th grade because my hand-eye coordination was too awful to solder worth a damn. And my best friend's dad built a Heathkit H89 computer, which drove me to tears, as I could never manage that level of build (he WAS a TV repairman, though).

Looks good ... but I'd like to see a picture of the other side to be sure :)

I sense a reflow oven in your future.

First he has to make a PCB. And before that he has to design one. And before that he has to get completely disgusted by the poor quality of EDA tools.

+David Mercer
There is no doubt that manual dexterity can be beneficial while pursuing electronics. I have certainly had my limits tested at times trying to do some things. Nevertheless, the most potent tool at our disposal is our minds, and using it to overcome obstacles is what we all have to do. Which is my way of saying that if you think about things enough you figure out ways of doing them.

There's a line that Anthony Hopkins' character says in The Edge that I like, "What one man can do, another can do." Now I like to elaborate on that a bit, and consider that we cannot all do things quite as well as each other, or perhaps as easily either. But we can all manage somehow. Each to the best of their abilities.

I find that I have to use binocular magnifying glasses, with the LED headlights accessory. Fucking old age.

+Russell Nelson
Sight I have found ways of compensating for, but I am not as steady as I used to be.

+Russell Nelson You understand, if I become completely disgusted by the poor quality of EDA tools it is likely I will get sidetracked into writing better ones.

+Eric Raymond, I think you have stumbled onto +Russell Nelson's evil plan.

+Eric Raymond
 This was done with FLOSS EDA software
http://www.delorie.com/electronics/bldc/

DJ told me he scripts board routing with his PCB software. You like to program, so it sounds like a match to me.

The graphic on the right side of this page is a cropped image of DJ's BLDC motor drive http://pcb.geda-project.org/ Coincidence? I think not!

+Eric Raymond Would the verb for that be to "knuth" EDA tools?

+Eric Raymond If the tools are anything like what I have heard then it is a foregone conclusion.

esr.fieldsShakenUp++;

ZAP!

Beats the TV Jammer devices we built back in Electronic Warfare School.   But that was 30 years ago, and there still was the occasional worthwhile program back then. . .

I'll get you a Heathkit stereo and you can work on that next.

+Jim Mog Heathkits.  It was a dark day when they stopped making Heathkits. . .

+Jim Mog
Well, that's extra nice of you, considering I did my soldering during that weekly period when I would normally have been at your fine establishment purchasing superior-quality barbecue products from your esteemed self.

Heathkit appears to be moribund, alas.

http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2014/12/20/heathkit-the-electronic-history-mystery/

Superior-quality barbecue products?  You got a website, +Jim Mog?  It turns out I'm in the market for superior-quality barbecue products.

+Rob Shinn
+Jim Mog makes far and away the best 'cue I've ever had north of the Mason-Dixon line, and could school a good many places south of it.

My wife and I are Sunday night regulars at his place.

It's a shame that Heathkit is moribund, too. They set the standard for kit instruction manuals. If you followed the instructions in the manual explicitly, they'd guarantee the finished kit would run. The only way to screw up a Heathkit was to decide you knew better than they did and not follow the instructions.

Ah.  I thought maybe he sold grills. :)  I need new one, +Eric Raymond.  I make some some pretty decent 'cue myself.

+Keith Glass It's not widely known that Ladyada (she of +Adafruit Industries, née +Limor Fried) cut her teeth on projects such as FreshAir http://www.ladyada.net/techproj/freshair/index.html

So it's no surprise she's involved in TV-B-Gone...

+Jay Maynard Elecraft has certainly taken up the "good kit documentation" standard long-maintained by Heathkit, and they acknowledge that legacy explicitly, Unfortunately the target audience for their kits is pretty much limited to radio amateurs.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/113857309878860036937

Once upon a time, Eric was looking at getting his ham ticket...

I've seen the Elecraft stuff. Looks pretty good. If I was in the market for a radio, I'd give it a good look.

Nice job!