Prepare your workshop

General considerations

Before you start you should ask yourself how many participants you want to allow. Our experience at the first workshop was, that 10 participants in a two hour workshop is very tight with two advisors is possible but tight. The more help you get from already experienced participants the better. Chose the number carefully - if in doubt allow less if you do it for the first time.

You should also make sure that the location is suitable. There should be enough space for all participants to sit and work. Enough light should be available as soldering of small spots can be very difficult without enough light. Make sure in advance that there is enough power for multiple electric tools like soldering ion, hotglue-guns, hotair pistols, etc.

Get the components

The boards of the hat are prebuild like described in the build your own article. You need teh same components - just times N. If you calculate the parts that you should count some spare parts in. Especially the small SMD components vanish as soon as they hit the carpet ;). This should not be a problem, as they’re cheap.

You should also order a few more PCBs than you actually need. Sometimes one is broken or breaks within the workshop. If you don’t need the spares you can use them in the next workshop. We also recommend to order a stencil with the boards, as it makes the production of the boards almost endlessly easier and faster. If you go the Stencil-path then 10g solder paste is enough for more than 20 boards.

Generally: plan enough time for ordering the components. We had problems with the PCB and the stencil (it took 3 instead of one week).

As a shopping list you can use our incomplete list from the first workshop. If you do so, then consider the following notes:

• Every channel can drive up to 100 LEDs. So if you want to every participant 100 LED and you buy the 60 LED per meter strips you need 1.6m per participant. We had 15m for 10 participants and everyone was happy in the end. So consider something in this region.
• We used prepared JST connectors (a female plug with a 15cm cable on it). We would not have beed able to finish in time if we had the participants crimp their own plugs.
• The list does not contain shrinking tube to cover the solder spots.
• The list does not contain any wire (to make the cables on the connectors longer if needed).
• The list does not contain solder.
• The list does not contain the actual hotglue sticks.
• You might want wo provide little USB-Powerbanks so that the participants can actually use their hats. We bought very small ones for about 12€ each. All available packs should work. If in doubt - test it before.

Get the tools

To produce the PCBs you need:

• tweezers (to place the components)
• A fine soldering ion (for the bigger components)
• A hot plate for the “reflow process”

On the site of the workshop you need several electric tools:

• Soldering ions (to solder)
• Hotglue guns (to glue the LEDs)
• Hotair guns (for shrinking tube to cover the solder spots)

For 10 participants we had 4 soldering ions, 3 hotglue guns and 2 hotair guns. This was enough to keep the participants busy. You don’t need one tool per participant as it works better if they help each other anyway.

Also don’t forget the stands and cleaning sponges for the soldering ions.

In terms of non-electric tools you’ll need:

• Wirecutters
• Scissors
• crafting knifes

Produce the boards

… comming soon …

Programm the boards

… comming soon …