now the beard de gear is temple star 2 from low life brewing in winnipeg they describe it
as a new world brett saison brett being a type of hops and cezanne being this style of beer so they
say down here that it's been aged on cherries and that goes with their tasting notes which indicate
that it's earthy and cherry not my usual style but yeah you got to go out in the limb now and again
yeah there is a strong fruit flavor in there it's going to be an interesting evening so i am tonight
going to do the second half of that uh radio kit set that i got a while ago i did the receiver
no i didn't i did the transmitter a few weeks ago and i'll put a link to that up there
here is the receiver kit which is a much simpler kit and a little bit trickier
for new players these may look like resistors but i believe they are actually inductors
and then what else is in here a little pin of some sort we got a couple of push buttons
earphone output third push button fourth push button fifth push button small handful
capacitors one actual resistor oh that is a crystal that is the oscillator that the time
base of the receiver is based on and then we have this itty bitty chip which is an rda 5800
which is of course an fm receiver chip all in one very few support components to make it work
as i said just a few inductors and capacitors and some push buttons to select modes and
the oscillator so let's uh let's get busy with this simple little kit
actually before we do that let's look at the schematic which again is very simple because
ninety percent of this is just in this one chip we have the crystal oscillator 32.768 kilohertz
a very common very standard frequency for watch crystals
we have a capacitor three volts worth of batteries handful push buttons scattered around channel
up and down push buttons volume up and down push buttons uh power button and then the three oh it's
three inductors there are literally no resistors okay and a couple of dc block capacitors going
out to the stereo headphone output let's see if we can look up that chip actually maybe that'll tell
us more yeah to nobody's surprise it is a single chip fm receiver module with everything going on
inside it we have a low noise amplifier we have a couple of rf mixers we have a couple more
amplifiers analog to digital converter and audio digital signal processing core that's interesting
so it digitizes it and then analogizes it again from these two digital analog converters okay
and then of course the crystal input through a synthesizer through a voltage-controlled
oscillator into the mixers mixes with the incoming rf boom done oh it has an i squared c control
interface so i could control it with oh okay yeah right that microcontroller is external okay
and just for funsies i am going to use this 3d printed circuit board holder it's
by far not the best circuit board holder that i've got but it'll do the job as usual with these
inexpensive kits you don't really need an assembly manual all the part numbers are labeled on the
board so that's not all that difficult there's the two one micro henry inductors and there is a
0.1 micro henry inductor and as we can see we got two of one and one of the other so
that's pretty straightforward there are two larger capacitors or push buttons
um the smaller ceramic capacitors looks like there's a couple of different types of them
alrighty the battery and the crystal so i think we will get started with the inductors just because
they are the least likely to get damaged by ham-fisted soldering so might as well put
them on first now this is the single one which is going to be the 0.1 micro henry
but just in case we can't trust them we'll test it for ourselves 0.12 that is what that guy is
i guess i shouldn't have been surprised i might as well put the other ones in as well
should i put some of the ceramic caps in first i'm not sure huh there is a resistor came with
the kit that doesn't show on the schematic that i found but it goes down here it says it's a 30k
and i think that is enough components for the initial solder batch just to
get me started here normally you don't want to pre-load too many components at once because
they just start getting in your way it comes with an ugly little forest of components on the board
this is a comfortable number
one thing i've got to be a little bit careful of is lead placement in relation to the chip
because that chip could get hard to solder down but i kind of want to put it down as close to the
end as possible just so it doesn't get damaged so i will carry on with the low likelihood to
cause damage components such as the mechanical stuff like this jack here and a bunch of switches
nice thing about these little switches is you don't have to bend the leads because their leads
are already bent so they won't just snap into the board and hold their place when you flip it over
this guy's going together really really quickly let's get these little ceramic caps in next
before they fall off my bench and i lose them forever
so we have three little ceramic caps a 103 which is 10 nanofarads a 223 which is 22 nanofarads
and a 24 which doesn't show up in my chart so i'm not quite sure exactly what it is but it
doesn't really matter because the part number is what's labeled on the board so that makes it easy
you don't have to know for absolute certain what it is just read the part number and go
and while we're doing capacitors might as well do the 200 microfarad dc block
caps which are called c4 and c5 negative goes to the right hand side stripe is the negative side
well this is low voltage enough that i don't suppose it's going to cause any catastrophic
failure if they're in backwards it's just not going to work as effectively let's make
sure there's enough weed on those to fold them over so they sit flat like they're supposed to
right there's only two components plus the power pack left so let's
start procrastinating and tackle the little integrated circuit here there's no direct pin one
marking but there is the notch at the end which means that this over here is pin one and on the
chip we have this dot indicating that that is pin one i will first just tin one pad on one corner
i'm picking that one this is the easiest one for me to get to and try not to be too shaky
yeah that's not gonna happen just get in there and tack that corner down
and then take a close look and realign the chip
nudge it into position so that all the pads actually line up where they're supposed to be
like that and then put a drop of solder on another pad let's pick this corner down here
okay that should have it anchored in place so it won't move i'm still practicing
still learning with surface mount but i'm getting better i think that's going to work
the next half of this trick is just not creating any solder bridges
but you work slow and steady and you can get her done if an old bugger like me with shaky hands can
manage it i'm sure most of you guys can eventually too just put in the practice like anything
that's a bit blob-tacular i don't think it's shorting anything
before i forget i'm going to just refill the first one good and then i'm going to get my head in
here a lot closer uh which means you guys won't be able to see what i'm doing but i'm going to solder
up the rest of it as best i can and i'll come back and let you help me inspect it afterwards
not beautiful but it's electrically sound and nothing is shorted
and that's good enough for me so the last component to put on the board
is the crystal it goes in those two pins beside the chip right there right here y1
and again it bends over flat against the board like that i'm going to solder him in place
get him attacked down in place here
so the only thing left is the power and judging by the tie wraps in the kit it would seem to
indicate that this is supposed to get strapped onto there these pair holes in these pair of
holes yeah that seems reasonable and where does the power weeds go and they go on over here
oh that's an awful lot of wire i think i'm going to shorten it up a little bit
maybe about that much
i hope it's not too short so positive there and negative there
yeah except for they got to come from this side so poke them through
those little string leafy holes first and then back around and out the other side
this shouldn't be the hardest part of the buddy kit get in there okay
there that was surprisingly frittery to get those little buggers in there but
perseverance swearing and a bit of beer
always comes through for me pull those strainers up nice and tight and that can get strapped on
and as always if you don't use flush cutters to trim your ties you're a monster your co-workers
will hate you future you will hate you just use the proper tool i know often i
use whatever tools handy but this is one case where the proper tool really really matters
because you don't want to be leaving sharp ends that'll slice you up later and trust me they will
there we go done so now we need a couple of double a cells and we need
something to plug this into one moment please all right get some quality dollar store panasonic
cells in here it's a little tight but we can work around that that's cool um connect the
audio output little powered speaker that i got off to the side here oh hey we got music
distorted music
let's see what happens we tune the channels a little bit more
that's i'm
so obvious i'm not going to stay on any channel very long because i will get nailed with coffee
well that's not going to cause me copyright strike probably
it's not this best high fidelity nice
but i think it's listenable and with all the assaults in the city
yeah i think that works pretty darn well actually and it's obviously not high fidelity but
for a first try for a simple cheap little kit i think it was only
is definitely less than five dollars probably in the three four dollar range if i remember
correctly uh there will be a link down below to the mailbag where this thing came in
and as i mentioned before it was packaged with a transmitter circuit
this i think is the better of the two circuits from an audio quality point of view and also
it's much more beginner friendly except for the surface mount uh chip on the other side
everything else is really really easy and as a first surface mount kit that's not a bad choice
for uh for somebody who's just getting into this stuff i like it definitely recommended for for any
newcomers who are wanting to get some practice soldering building kits and just tinkering with
electronics well thanks for watching everybody i appreciate it as always questions and comments
down below there will be a few links down there as well i'll talk to you later