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Comment by htoooh | Hacker News Reader

An alternative which I subscribe to is Hackerboxes[0]. It's a bit cheaper at $44/month and each month's box comes with all of the required hardware. You can check out the instructions for past boxes here[1].

I've followed both thimble.io and Hackerboxes prior to launch and thimble.io definitely has more thorough instructions and a nice learning platform[2] which may be less intimidating for beginners.

I ended up going with Hackerboxes because the kits include all the parts, use of open source hardware, the lower price, and they've already shipped a year's worth of kits.

[0] http://www.hackerboxes.com/

[1] http://www.instructables.com/member/HackerBoxes/instructable...

[2] https://learning.thimble.io/

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The Hackerboxes site's main picture is of some surface mount blank boards, and I thought "Those guys are hardcore - they expect you to solder surface mount." But no. None of their kits require SMT assembly. The pictures are just clip art.

I find SMT assembly somewhat easier than through hole especially with a good temperature controlled iron. My experience level is just fixing up PCBs or adding a few parts while developing firmware at work.

I find there is a curve in learning how to solder SMT.

At first it's really difficult because of fear from the small size, sometimes the price of components, and the lack of proper equipment.

At some point you learn how your hands work, what techniques work, and how things flow; suddenly then things become easy and through-hole seems like a boring chore.

My enlightenment came with a good Hakko iron and the satisfaction of having a SMT capacitor 'snap' into place under a good solder flow. After that point of finally having a confirmation of what should happen, a weight fell off my shoulders -- mostly generated by anxiety from over-reading about what SHOULD be done rather than experimenting and just trying to get it done.

Now I jump at (most) smt projects.

(edit: not a bell curve, just a slip of the tongue)

Leaded solder, or lead-free? What I've been reading is that at the hobbyist level, most people are still using leaded solder. The tight temperature tolerances of lead-free are hard. I've tried hand-soldering with lead-free solder, but keep getting cold solder joints.

Stanford EE just set up a maker space, called Lab 64. I'm going to find out what tools they use, and how they teach soldering. Stanford EE labs have big "No Pb" signs; they insist on lead-free soldering.

I only use lead free these days - I also teach kids SMT first, I think it's easier to learn - thru hole requires better solder temp management than SMT and essentially 3 hands.

We start by giving the kids hot air and tweezers to harvest some parts from an old board, then have them install them on a scrap proto board no one needs any more

Is there a subscription box that sends you just the parts for a project that uses an Arduino? Basically, I want to save cost by not having to get the (usually) most expensive part of the kit. I don't mind dismantling each month's project to reuse the core components.

From I can tell this is the model thimble.io follows though it is more expensive. I'm not aware of any other subscription box which offers this.

From what I can see, Hackerboxes use an ESP8266 01 or an Arduino Nano, both of which cost around $2. You will definitely not be paying lots for the MCU, and it's good to have lots of them (I have around 20 of various types at any time) because they're dirt cheap and you can use them anywhere.

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