So I got myself an mp3Elf. Very nice bits of kit but they are in fact just that: a kit. Below is a picture of the bedlam on my desk after emptying SOME of the components out of their bags.

Watch out for the SMT capacitors. They're loose in one of the bags with the resistors and it took me several minutes to find them all as they seem to stick to the resistor legs, rather than moving freely.

The Build

The instructions call for doing things in a sequence, which works pretty and is obviously done for a reason. I found the instructions to be a little sparse. I might try to write my own complete construction guide at some point.

Techniques

There's definitely a knack to this. On almost all the SMT chips on the mp3elf there is a large solder pad, which is longer than the pin itself. I start by tinning a blob of solder in oposing corner pads. You can then solder one corner pin down and get the chip in the correct position. Then solder down the opposite corner pin to lock the chip in position.

For all the other pins, the method I found worked best was to push the soldering iron straight down onto the pin and feed solder onto the extra space on the solder pad.

I didn't have any and all the SMT capacitors on the circuit board were very hard to place. For mose I ended up tinning one of the solder pads, melting the cap onto that pad and then flowing solder onto the other pad.

Seriously. I enjoyed building the board but it was pretty much at the limit of what I was able to do and it took 4-5 hours to build. I think the best rule to follow is that if you don't feel comfortable debugging and fault-finding on the board then the ready built one might be a good idea.

Consider solder paste as an alternative to soldering the joints. I don't know how easy this stuff is to use at home, but it is possible .

Once the whole thing is built, you can add a Tini and power it up. What happens? If you're unlucky like me then absolutely nothing happens. Now it's time to start tracing what's going wrong. In my case the power light wont even come on so it's likely to be a short or a break in something.

Update 01/05/02
Well, there wasn't anything wrong with the board, or my soldering (so far at least). It turns out that you need to add wire links accross Either R22 and R23 for AC or over R7 and R8 for the Direct 5V input. The instructions are a little unclear about this, and only mention using the AC links. Once I realised what was going on, you could see on the schematic what was going on, but it was hard for me to work this out. I'm sure a future revision of the instructions will fix this.

Update 07/05/02
It Works!!!! Once you get power to the board you need to flash the PIC chip and then get the server running. Once all of that is done then it's ready to run. Of course, without an LCD it's a little hard to use, but I'll add an LCD soon. Given the number of components involved I'm really stunned it went as well as it did. I was expecting to spend a long while debugging it.