×

SparkFun will be closed on Tuesday, November 5th to support our team in being able to go out and vote! Orders placed after 2 pm MT Monday, November 4th will ship on Wednesday, November 6th. Thanks for your patience and understanding.

Lighthouse Beginner Soldering Kit

A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor, so start learning how to solder with this kit! With this Lighthouse soldering kit you will be able to learn the basics and some intermediate skills of soldering by being able to assemble an Isophase lighthouse! Each Lighthouse kit takes about 10-20min to assemble with basic soldering materials (not included). Fear not all you lovers of Lovecraft and occulting lighthouses, by changing the value of the resistors you can change the flashing pattern!

Every Lighthouse Beginner Soldering Kit includes one lighthouse PCB and base, a CR2032 battery holder, four resistors, two NPN transistors, two capacitors, a power switch and a single white LED for the lighthouse light!. All you need to supply (besides a soldering iron and solder) is a CR2032 coin cell battery since it is not included to make shipping easier.

Note: Since this product is a kit, assembly and a basic knowledge of soldering will be required. The Lighthouse soldering kit does not come pre-assembled.

  • 1x Lighthouse PCB
  • 1x Stand PCB
  • 1x White LED
  • 1x 220 Ohm Resistor
  • 1x 82k Ohm Resistor
  • 2x 220k Ohm Resistors
  • 2x 2N3904 NPN Transistors
  • 2x 10uF Capacitors
  • 1x Power Switch
  • 1x CR2032 Battery Holder

Lighthouse Beginner Soldering Kit Product Help and Resources

Core Skill: Soldering

This skill defines how difficult the soldering is on a particular product. It might be a couple simple solder joints, or require special reflow tools.

2 Soldering

Skill Level: Rookie - The number of pins increases, and you will have to determine polarity of components and some of the components might be a bit trickier or close together. You might need solder wick or flux.
See all skill levels


Core Skill: Electrical Prototyping

If it requires power, you need to know how much, what all the pins do, and how to hook it up. You may need to reference datasheets, schematics, and know the ins and outs of electronics.

2 Electrical Prototyping

Skill Level: Rookie - You may be required to know a bit more about the component, such as orientation, or how to hook it up, in addition to power requirements. You will need to understand polarized components.
See all skill levels


Comments

Looking for answers to technical questions?

We welcome your comments and suggestions below. However, if you are looking for solutions to technical questions please see our Technical Assistance page.

Customer Reviews

3.7 out of 5

Based on 3 ratings:

Currently viewing all customer reviews.

1 of 1 found this helpful:

Good excercise for beginners

I made an activity for a group of 20 middle and high school kids to solder the light-house kit.

They were very excited. It was easy and straight forward. We finished the project in under 3 hours.

Some of them made some mistakes like soldering the capacitors in the opposite polarity etc. they learnt how to correct their mistakes.

It worked very well.

Thank you

1 of 1 found this helpful:

Great soldering project

This was a great kit for the scouting electronics merit badge. Just be sure that you pay attention to the battery holder as the center piece tends to fall out. This was engaging and a helpful learning tool. Several kids learned they needed to pay more attention with getting some of the components in the right orientation. If I had to do it all over again, I would choose this kit again.

1 of 1 found this helpful:

Sorry Junk - wrong parts

Ordered 2 of these for gifts, had ordered these before but both of these were junk with the wrong parts

1st one - the battery holder had a pin that was way too large for the circuit board and the switch would not fit into the mounting holes, tried to drill out the mounting hole for the battery holder, not a good idea, after 90 minutes pitched it

2nd one - sent the wrong resistors and again the pin on the battery holder was too large for the mounting board, this time I just put it in a bag and put in junk box. BUT the switch did fit!

Not recommended until you can figure out how to have the correct parts in the kit.

So my holiday giving is messed up,I have a couple of friends that help with Lighthouses and they really liked one I put together some times back, so I was going to give them their own Lighthouse.

So not sure what to do

UPDATE: A few emails with the returns folks and they sent me two new Lighthouse Kits and they had the correct parts in them, and just finished one Lighthouse

PS: I frost the LED with a 100 grit soft sanding block from 3M - I think it gives a nicer light

Thanks Sparkfun

Sorry to hear you received defective kits and we're looking into this. If you head over to this page, we can get you fixed up.