dominicbeesley wrote:Sorry Steve, got to diagree with you on the DONT USE IT message....
Well, I have to concede that I have used SMD devices (SOICs) on veroboard, but it was a bodge. But when a chip has pins spaced at 0.5mm and there's upward of 60 of 'em it all gets a little too much.
I have seen kits where the major SMD devices have been soldered already, you do the rest. It's a reasonable compromise for kit construction where everything has been thought out beforehand.
My point was that someone is listening to user feedback and doing something about the issues.
A large (if not the largest) part of the cost of a kit of this nature is the PCB. You can change the software, you can change a resistor from 10k to 4k7, the cost impact is minimal. But to re-lay out the PCB could put you in deep water. What about the 5000 already made that are now useless? The losses can be enormous.
So Kudos to those that have made this change to this kit, if there were a choice between MkI and MkII, with a small increase in board area and even perhaps cost, I know which one I would choose. PCBs once within a production environment are costed on area and number of processes required.
In this plug-and-play world the fact that someone is producing kits that require assembly has to be encouraged. In an e-mail to Jeremy recently I said, "In a few years time anyone under the age of 35 will not know which end of a soldering iron gets hot."
Steve A.