Project Derpbug
When I returned from my winter trip to Boston, my head was full of robots and 3D printing machines. I'd been exposed to a lot of technology and techniques that I'd never seen before. Now that I had, I wanted to try some of it out for myself. But the key skill required for most electronics projects is soldering, and while most people I met had learned how to do it as a kid, I'd never done it in my life. One of the combat robot people suggested I try the light spider kit he had used when starting out as a kid.The search for an insectoid robot kit had begun!
Looking for a suitable kit
It turned out that the light spider kit is either discontinued or out of stock in many places, and most of the websites that do have it also have a minimum order or high shipping. Electronics Goldmine wanted $23 for the little guy! That seemed too much to me, so I decided I could try to look irl for something similar.
Surely there are electronics stores in NYC?
I was able to get a soldering iron from radioshack, but everything else there was incredibly expensive and there were no bugbots to be found--only employees desperate to sell me a cell phone contract.
I found the webpages of various hackerspaces in NYC that had lists of electronics stores, but many no longer existed. :( I made a list of the ones that did and went to check them out.
1. NYU bookstore
I didn't really want to buy anything here if I could help it. But, as it turns out it, they don't really have anything anyway so...
2. Canal 242
My electronics sense started tingling as I walked past this storefront. I went inside to take a look, and found an electronics repair center hidden way in the back past all the knockoff purses and other stereotypical Chinatown merchandise. The guy behind the counter there had some IC chips and random electronics stuff that he was happy to show off to an interested visitor, but this place focused mostly on repair, not hobbyist electronics/robotics.
3. Tinkersphere
I looked on their website and found a suitable candidate, the running microbug kit. I ventured down to the East Village and found the store of my dreams. It might be small, but Tinkersphere is the best resource I've found for hobby robotics in the NYC area.
With my new baby bug in hand, I returned home to Harlem to begin assembly.
You couldn't even see what you supposed to be building until you took it out of the package!
The instructions gave me flashbacks to IKEA furniture assembly with their cryptic pictoral diagrams.
They added these extremely derpy looking little bugs here and there.
Laying out all the pieces.
Super tiny DC motors!
Testing the fit of the components.
Ready to solder!
Unfortunately, things did not go too well. I watched some youtube tutorials and read some soldering guides to prepare. But, the solder blobbed up and refused to stick to the pads. On one pad, the solder balled up and refused to melt, much to my confusion.
I burned the board so badly that I was sure I'd murdered my bug. All the people I knew who knew how to solder were in Boston. Where could I go for help?
Hack Manhattan
Hack Manhattan electronics bench.
Photo of me with the random glowy thing at Hack Manhattan.
In my search for NYC electronics stores, I'd come across several hackerspaces. I looked on meetup.com and found that Hack Manhattan has open house sessions every Tuesday and Thursday where you can come and work on stuff and chill. I decided I'd go and try to work on the derpbug there and hope that someone would take pity on me and give my n00b self some advice.
I was right!
Reviving the derpbug
It was a little awkward at first but people were friendly enough. I'd brought my own soldering iron, but it turned out there was already one there. One of the guys gave me a soldering 101 summary and demonstration on some scrap perfboard.
"Oh, it's just like hot glue," I said, remembering my cosplay outfits of yore.
"It's...nothing like hot glue," he replied.
Well, I still think it's like hot glue.
Some of the stuff I already knew from reading tutorials, but there were a few key things I had missed:
1. The solder I'd bought was too fat. The thinner solder made things MUCH easier.
2. I had bought the kind of rosin flux that comes in a jar. They had a solder pen there that wet the board if you pressed the pen tip to the board. This was a lot more convenient.
3. The "solder" that wouldn't melt was actually the pad from the circuit board. My crappy radioshack iron was too hot and destroyed the adhesive holding it to the board. The hackerspace had a variable temperature iron and all of the problems I was having virtually disappeared when I used it instead.
The soldering guy ran a wire to the mangled trace on the
board to circumvent the destroyed pad and then let me at it.
Peacefully working on my derpbug at the Hack Manhattan soldering bench.
Coming together nicely!
It was great having someone to doublecheck that I was doing things correctly, too.
Soldering guy: Actually, it doesn't matter. It's not even connected to the circuit board.
He was right. The diode serves no function except to hold up the little plastic tube that holds the derpbug's rear end off the ground as it runs around. Why they didn't just use a plain old wire instead is beyond me, but...
This conversation lead to another conversation with a different Hack Manhattan later in the night, who had overheard part of the conversation but not all of it and was curious about what had led to it. ("I was like, wait, what? The n00b is saying the diode orientation matters, and the experienced guy is saying it doesn't...?")
Even better, another engineer there had seen my radio shack iron and advised me to get a Hakko FX-888D. When I said that I couldn't afford one right now, he told me to come back on Tuesday, and he'd give me his (!) since he didn't use it much anymore. Suffice it to say, I came back on Tuesday.
Hot! Literally.
