Estes Valley Library - Robots and Tech: Solder for a Light Up Tree

 

December 17, 2022 brought the Estes Valley Library - Robots and Tech: Solder for a Light Up Tree class. I was very excited for this after my ornament - because I wanted to redeem myself for having 1 light that didn't blink on my soldering ornament. 

Sometimes bad luck likes to search me out and it comes in 3's. First I was 7 minutes late due to a tourist jam - tourists literally standing in the middle of the road not moving for anyone and no idea why as there was no wildlife in the area. Second, this was a teen and adult class and someone saw fit to bring their five year old and that child seemed to be babysat by myself or the instructor, not by the parent. Third. the child was carrying around the demo trees and since the instructor was busy having to babysit and trying to help people, I wasn't able to see the demo and my tree got put together wrong so only part of it lit up. I was just going to get another kit and try it some other day, but the instructor took my tree and gave me one of the demos that was working, because she felt badly that I didn't get the instruction that the other people did.

The library does great with their classes and we had everything that we needed to start our tree - they had even put the main pieces on the tree that are the circuit creators. We had to solder each and every bulb (once on the front, twice on the back) then put the tree together (this is where i didn't get to see a demo and put postive/negative next to each other and it was supposed to be positive on one side and negative on the other so that when you soldered it to the base that made it light up all the way around. 

After soldering to the base you had to screw on the battery housing and connect the battery wires to the base. Then put in batteries and light the tree up. 

This required so much soldering and it was a good lesson in making sure your points were soldered well and connected well. I was pleased with my solder points and other than the error of not understanding the way the tree was being put together - this was a fun and exciting class and I would do something like it again.