The Stickuino is delivered as a kit and needs to be assembled by its owner. That means: soldering! Soldering is a great skill to possess for the rest of your lifetime. Furthermore, it will take away any hesitations or fear you might have for handling delicate hardware. In short: it will help you to become a Maker.
Reserve a slot
To solder your Stickuino, reserve a slot for one of the soldering workshops. Attending one of these workshops and soldering a Stickuino kit is a requirement for passing the Interaction technology course. (Unless you’ve been a participant in this course last year. If this concerns you and you haven’t done so already, please contact the lecturer of the embedded systems and sensors assignment to discuss this.)
The program
The program for each of the soldering workshops is:
- Handing out of Interaction technology kits, going over the contents and checking for completeness.
- Explanation of the Stickuino components and its assembly, as well as basic soldering techniques.
- Soldering, testing and cleaning of your Stickuino.
- Installation of the Arduino IDE on your computer and connecting to your Stickuino.
- First steps in programming your Stickuino with Blink, the Hello World for Arduino.
Bring your own computer to the workshop. It is important that you leave the workshop with a working hardware/software setup, to be able to work on the assignment from home.
Additional soldering?
It would be nice if you’d at least go through the first 4 steps during the soldering workshop, as it leaves you with a fully working environment that you can use on your own to build electronic circuits and program your microcontroller. If you run out of time and/or need to do some additional soldering later on, you can make use of the practical assistance that we offer. See the support page for details. Acquiring a (simple) soldering iron yourself, as well as some other basic tools (screwdriver, pliers) may save you some trips to campus.
Moving on
During the soldering workshop, you can take a break whenever you like. And of course, feel free to ask any questions. Let’s start working!