Basic ArduinoI finally got my order in from SparkFun.com this morning and couldn’t wait to try my hand at building out my Arduino boards. I’ve talked about them before here. The challenge was the USB to Serial chip which is a SMD chip. With my new iron and some good quality solder wick, I was able to get them on the first time with little to no effort. The iron is a HUGE leap forward for me. I can’t rave enough about how much I love it, granted I’m comparing it to my Radio Shack iron which is lovingly called a “fire starter” by most. Anyhow, built these boards and plugged them in to see if all was good, whatta ya know, right off the bat I was able to upload sketches to them both! I’ve got a few tweaks I’m going to make to this design tho, I”m going to add SMD leds for USB RX/TX activity and rearrange the boards just a bit. If you are wondering why on earth I’d have a vertical USB plug, it’s because I plan on using these boards for another project and that’s the orientation I wanted. You can easily switch the part out for the vertical one in Eagle. If you want the schematic or board files, they are attached to my previous post here. As for costs of these, I’ve got less than ~$15 US in each.