Saturday 3 May 2014

Assembly of AirPi V1.4

Starting from opening up the kit sort out everything into manageable areas so everything is tidy and easy to find. Once your soldering iron is to temperature then we are ready to begin.


First job solder the gpio header on, I for this tutorial have left it till last but for most it be easiest to do this first.

Next is the resistors I have lined them up keeping the first brown stripe to the right to ensure easy reading of the resistors.  As I have placed each one in in the correct part of the board I have bent the legs underneath to hold it in place dns make soldering easier.


A closer look at resistors.


And the back


Next was to trim the wires down with a pair of electrical wire cutters to tidy up the board and prevent short circuiting.


By now if not already you should be confident in your soldering.


The photo resistor and mic were next to be soldered followed by the LEDs. Note the LEDs have a positive a negative positive being the longer leg and negative the shorter one.


Again once soldered cut off the excess to prevent short circuiting to your board.

Now we want to place the chip holders, there are two for this project and if you look carefully at them and the board, one end has an indent this needs to match with the board and later the chip that goes into the chip holder.


When we have soldered them on they should look like this.


The back before soldering, notice how ive slightly bent the legs in on one and out on the other? This is to keep the holders in place and should the solder ever break should still keep connection.


Again when soldered.


Now just a few things left, the dht22, place the legs into the hole and bend into place before soldering , this should then keep in place on the board.



Then the bmp sensor.  I found with my previous airpi kit the heat from the board interfered with it so on this one I'm soldering the extended legs first, then using bluetac to hold the bmp so I can solder it at the top of the legs allowing air flow around it to disapate any board heat.


As I left the legs till last this is the last stage for me, carefully ensuring the extended gpio sits flush u solder each leg on. You don't have to use the provided extended you could use a normal header or cut this one down.  However if AirPi.es do bring out any additional add on boards then you won't be able to plug them onto this board.

You will notice the adafruit gps board location on the board, this is an optional extra to log your location and use UTC time with an extra program like gpsd. 

Although I won't show you how to solder it on its the same as the bmp but can sit as close to the board as possible, here is what it looked like on my v1.2 AirPi board.


Now it's time to head over to http://airpi.es/kit.php and follow links to the software to make all this work.

Should you experience any problems then there is the airpi forums at 
http://airpi.freeforums.net/board/1/general-board

Have fun with the airpi and don't forget to share yours with everyone, you could even add a link at the bottom.  Mine is sat in the conservatory so often seems high but can be viewed at 
https://xively.com/feeds/1002148982 however I do try to in the summer have it outside iron the windows ledge to allow for a more accurate reading.



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