Need Some Advice for a Christmas Gift

[johnnow]

Hi everyone. I haven't done anything electronics related in almost twenty years, but I do know just enough to understand what some components do. With that being said, I'm shopping for a Christmas present for my son. He's a college student studying Computer Science. He's planning on doing a LED lighting project which involves connecting a controller board to his computer and writing a program to control the LED's from his computer. In talking to him, he's mentioned a few things that he would need. For the controller board, he's leaning toward an Arduino board, but I don't know which one to get for him. He's also mentioned needing soldering iron. For that, I have done some research. I'm planning on getting him a Hakko soldering station, either the 888D or the 951. I'm leaning toward the 951, but may drop down to the 888D if the cost of other components runs too high. One thing I'm not sure on is what tips to get. I don't know how many LED's he's looking to use, so I'll leave that for him to buy. Also, are there any other components that he would need that he's possibly overlooking (capacitors, resistors, etc...)?

Any help would be appreciated, and if I need to provide any additional information, please let me know. Thanks.

[joeyjoejoe]

Amazon.com will have many Chinese kits which should be great for getting started. Just searching for "arduino starter" will have many combo kits with all you need to get tinkering, (eg. https://www.amazon.com/ELEGOO-Project-Starter-Tutorial-Arduino/dp/B01D8KOZF4/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?ie=UTF8&qid=1544282423&sr=8-1-spons&keywords=arduino+starter&psc=1 )

Looks like some have books or manuals, but there is also an absolute MOUNTAIN of beginner-oriented material all over the internet for Arduino. It's insane compare to what you (and I) experience 20 years ago - completely different game now.

The Hakko 888D will get him quite far. The 951 is great but unless you are sure this will become a lifelong hobby of his, it is overkill for what he's looking to do. However, if he has a birthday timed appropriately, that could be a gift for him later - he will likely need a bit of time fiddling with the kit he buys before he's anywhere close to permanently soldering things.

A multimeter might be much more useful during early days then a soldering iron. Again, Amazon.com has many import models which will be cheap and "good enough", and once he knows enough to know what he is looking for he could pick up something a bit nicer. (I believe the Aneng AN8008 is a good, cheap, first-timer multimeter, suitable for low-voltage tinkering).

[FriedMule]

I would clearly bye chisel tips for the iron in different sizes. I would maybe put some money in that package for him to use to bye components. Maybe you can try to get the 888 in silver finish, not better but just different looking then the standard.

[amlu]

soldering station or a multimeter, but ask him before which one he would like :-)
leave choosing or buying components to the young man, let him do the do the homework and bill of materials, pay the bill with your card if you wish :-)

my top class back in the day metex multimeter, got it from Dad 20 years ago still smiles on the bench.

[cdev]

My FX-888D bought fairly recently in the US from a very large west coast retailer came with a chisel tip - maybe the 1.6 mm chisel tip. I was overjoyed and have not had to purchase any additional tips as that is my prefferred tip for 90% of the soldering I do and I have another iron with a bunch of different tips.

However, when Dave reviewed the Fx-888D around the same time as my purchase (maybe a bit earlier) his came with a conical tip.  It might pay top ask the seller. They may ship it with a conical tip now. BTW, I would get the FX888D.

If he is studying computer science, something like an Analog Discovery 2 which combines a bunch of useful bench devices in a student and laptop friendly device, might be a better use of the money.

It can act as a compact laptop and student-friendly multimeter, function generator, logic analyzer, and several other often used instruments as well.

And a cheap multimeter and a bunch of solderless breadboards and 'dupont' wires would be useful too.

I have a very cheap little power supply that attaches to breadboards which can supply 3.3 volts and/or 5v on the two breadboard power rails. It cost maybe $3 and is super useful. Also the AVR Transistor Tester is super useful too, can measure and identify a bunch of different kinds of devices.. almost anything with three terminals or less.

 and can be found for around $15

I would clearly bye chisel tips for the iron in different sizes. I would maybe put some money in that package for him to use to bye components. Maybe you can try to get the 888 in silver finish, not better but just different looking then the standard.

[t1d]

One thing to be very wary of is counterfeits. The Hakko products are known targets. I bought my 888 off of Amazon, but 1) I verified the seller as an authorized Hakko retailer, at the Hakko site, before making my purchase and 2) I verified the device when I received it. There are instructions for doing the verification, on the internet. The tips are also faked... But, you may not need to buy those, immediately, if a chisel point comes with the station.

The Arduino products are faked, too. But, their clones seem to do an acceptable job, at a much better price point.

Stocking Stuffers
The Hakko 888 kit will likely come with a wet sponge and a brass sponge. I prefer the brass.
Flux and solder. Look on this forum, for recommendations. The good stuff can be more expensive than you might expect. Don't go cheap. Learn the difference between leaded soldered and lead-free solder. Leaded flows much better, but lead-free may be safer. You will have to make the call. Read the threads on this forum about the differences.
You might want to throw in a "Bread Board." Some of those are absolute junk, so maybe look at the Amazon ratings and comments, as opposed to buying off of Ebay, with no information.

YouTube has lots of good videos on correct soldering techniques. You will have to weed out the rookies. Check out the NASA (yes, the real NASA) series; it is a good place to start.

Making a LED Array Jig can really help with building a light cube. Look on YT, for DIY instructions. The trick is not just lining up the LED bulbs, but also offsetting the pin leads, vertically, to prevent contact shorts.

And, Merry Christmas!

[Kasper]

Just get him a genuine arduino uno.

That uno is probably the most common so there is tons of help for it and lots of shields. It can also be used to program other boards if he decides to make his own boards.

There are better, smaller and cheaper products out there but for a first kit, it's not worth spending all day sorting through the plethora of options and then the fun of finding and loading drivers specially if you dont know what options he wants and he has better stuff to do than mess with drivers for the cheap clone he was given.

[Prithul0218]

I'll leave this here.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free-shipping-High-Power-Electric-Soldering-Iron-Bending-Welding-Head-External-Heated-Type-CJ-505-300W/32811539361.html?spm=2114.search0104.3.54.10b8748cw8URXs&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_5_10065_10068_319_10059_10884_317_10887_10696_100031_321_322_10084_453_10083_454_10103_10618_10307_538_537_536,searchweb201603_51,ppcSwitch_0&algo_expid=e427f87b-4808-4a6b-91c3-c4446f6d9d67-10&algo_pvid=e427f87b-4808-4a6b-91c3-c4446f6d9d67

I'm just kidding. I would go with the 888D.

[Ian.M]

If he's going to be driving *lots* of LEDs, the extra I/Os of an Arduino Mega 2560 may be useful.   At least on a Mega, you get several full 8 bit ports, that aren't crippled by loosing two bits to the UART link to the host PC, the way the only 8 bit port on the Uno is.

[johnnow]

Wow, lots of great information. Looks like the FX-888D is the way to go for the soldering iron, and will definitely get him a multimeter. Now it's time to start looking for the parts. Thanks everyone. And, if anybody else has any suggestions, I'd be glad to hear them.

[brucehoult]

For the first board, get a genuine Arduino Uno and a kit with a good quality breadboard, assortment of resistors and capacitors and LEDs and switches and a potentiometer and LDR, thermistor, 7 segment or LCD display.

A cool thing about the Arduino is it can be used as an interface between a normal PC and a lot of hardware. It's easy to send commands from the PC to the Arduino and receive responses back from the Arduino using the serial port provided by the USB interface. If you're using a Mac or Linux PC you can read and write the serial port using a Bash shell script, or Python/Perl/Ruby, or C. Whatever you want. (I suppose on Windows too, but I'm not familiar with it)

If he wants to drive a *lot* of LEDs I suggest chaining together a few '595 shift registers (e.g. SN74HC595N but there are many manufacturers). You only need three pins on the Arduino to drive as many of them as you want. They have powerful enough outputs to drive LEDs or 7 segment displays directly.

You can trivially set all the outputs of the '595 something like this:

Code: [Select]

#define NR595s 10

char LEDs[NR595s];

void displayLEDs(){
  digitalWrite(myLatchPin, LOW);
  for (int i=0; i<NR595s; ++i) shiftOut(myDataPin, myClockPin, LSBFIRST, LEDs[i]);
  digitalWrite(myLatchPin, HIGH);
}

void setLED(int LEDnum, bool state){
  int ICnum = LEDnum/8, bitNum = LEDnum%8;
  if (ICnum >= NR595s) return; // ERROR .. or do whatever
  if (state)
    LEDs[ICnum] |= (1<<bitNum);
  else
    LEDs[ICnum] &= ~(1<<bitNum);
}

I think the default shiftOut() function runs at about 100,000 bits per second on a 16 MHz ATMega (e.g. Uno).

So if you want to update the LEDs ten times a second then you could have something close to ten thousand LEDs or 1200 '595 chips!!

If that's not fast enough then you can make faster implementations of shiftOut() yourself.

But it's probably fast enough.

They're about $0.45 each if you buy 10 or more https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/texas-instruments/SN74HC595N/296-1600-5-ND/277246

[Hextejas]

 
I was just thinking about what tools I use all the time and near the top of the list are these
 "locking tweezers"
A lighted magnifying glass
Solder wick
In the beginning, a soldering practice kit.

[johnnow]

Thank you everyone for the suggestions. I wound up getting him the FX888D, the EEVBlog 235 multimeter, an Arduino Uno 3, and a components kit off of Amazon. I held off on the solder and led light strips mostly because I was too busy this week writing a term paper to research solder. I figure once he figures out the circuit on the breadboard, he can get solder and the led strips.

[sokoloff]

For the LED strips, get APA102 (or clones)-based strips. Much easier to use than the 3-wire WS2812 which have tight timing requirements. The APA102 has a 4 wire connection, power, gnd, clock, data, which means you have a lot of freedom on the clock signal.

I made Halloween costumes this year with 5 strips all driven from a single Arduino Nano. (Side note: the Chinese clones of the Arduinos are perfectly fine in my experience and ~20% the cost.)

[james_s]

I would clearly bye chisel tips for the iron in different sizes. I would maybe put some money in that package for him to use to bye components. Maybe you can try to get the 888 in silver finish, not better but just different looking then the standard.

I've used the same single chisel tip on my iron for years, I use it for everything from 0.5mm TQFP ICs to big chunky terminal lugs. IMHO it's rare that you need an assortment of tips, certainly a beginner is not going to need that. Better to get a good all around tip and practice.

[t1d]

Thank you everyone for the suggestions. I wound up getting him the FX888D, the EEVBlog 235 multimeter, an Arduino Uno 3, and a components kit off of Amazon. I held off on the solder and led light strips mostly because I was too busy this week writing a term paper to research solder. I figure once he figures out the circuit on the breadboard, he can get solder and the led strips.

Well, that will make an excellent Christmas, for anyone! Good job...

Starting with such great equipment, he is going to miss climbing a good part of the equipment learning curve, so encourage him to do some research on why his equipment is so great... It will help him avoid backing up and making mistakes, like buy fake tips, etc...

Can't remember if this has been suggested, but he is going to need some good cutters, to trim all those LED pins. As with all this gear, a bit of research is needed, to find the quality types.

[cdev]

What kind of tip was on the FX-888D when you got it? Mine came with a (approx) 1.6 mm chisel tip.

Thank you everyone for the suggestions. I wound up getting him the FX888D, the EEVBlog 235 multimeter, an Arduino Uno 3, and a components kit off of Amazon. I held off on the solder and led light strips mostly because I was too busy this week writing a term paper to research solder. I figure once he figures out the circuit on the breadboard, he can get solder and the led strips.

[BeBuLamar]

It may not be a nice way to give gift because I believe to be a good gifter you should know exactly what the receiver wants without asking. But in this case perhaps it's best to ask him for the list of exactly what he need and you just order them.

[sokoloff]

Overwhelmingly likely that the gift has long-ago been given and the college student likely graduated by now...

[bidrohini]

Overwhelmingly likely that the gift has long-ago been given and the college student likely graduated by now...

Just noticed the date....Yeah. Hopefully you are right.