First Velleman kit, TV Tennis - troubleshooting

[Stonent]

So this was my first real soldering kit. I mean I've soldered stuff before, but never a self assembly kit like this.

And of course it didn't work. The power light wouldn't come on. I checked all the joints and was reasonably sure I didn't bridge any joints. So I started googling pictures of the board just to make sure there wasn't something that had missed and everything looked good.

So then came the systematic tracing out of stuff on the schematic. I checked all parts that were tied to ground and got good continuity on all of them. So then I checked all the things tied to +4.5 and all those were good. I plugged it in again and no power but I shifted my hand across the bottom and the light came on but nothing on the screen.

I went back and started checking traces coming from the Pic and found what appeared to be an open connection between the clock pin and the crystal. So I reflowed the solder on those connections and still open. The solder had bonded to the copper pads but there was nothing between them. I finally took a scrap from a resistor and just jumpered it across and it worked! Success!



Then I remembered when I was looking at pictures of other kits people had done, there was someone who built one with an 8 year old and had a dead trace that he had to jumper similarly.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-P50M4bKz32s/TiN2lTSvkuI/AAAAAAAAE0I/OvHXT38-cNQ/s1600/IMG_7417.JPG

Anyway I didn't like how the RCA jacks turned out but it looks like they had holes for different form factors, but it worked.

So I guess on to my next kit, the Velleman Pic experimenter kit. I wonder if I'll be able to dump the PIC16C505 chip on this board?

[c4757p]

Ugh... I hate that. Shitty PCBs are always a freaking joy.

By the way, where'd you get the soldering shovel? I've been looking for one!

[Stonent]

Well I started on the other kit and I kept on turning it off between loading parts, but since the plating was gone off the copper, my tip has actually vanished.  This was the 20 year old iron that I dug out from a box from when I was a kid.

Normally I would use my fine tip butane iron that I got a long time ago to replace an SMD part, but I'm almost out of butane.

[Fraser]

I suggest you write to Velleman detailing your experience with this kit and the faulty pcb trace. Velleman are actually a very good company to deal with. I detailed a fault on the PC Controlled function generator that I built (noise on teh clock line) and Velleman responded by offering any two kits from their basic range. I received the LCD sign unit and the FM radio receiver kit 

Velleman kits are usually well tested so if one does not work, they are interested. Many faults are caused by component placement error but yours is a pcb production fault so more serious.