Requirements

If you're interested in building one of these yourself and are hoping to use these pages as a guide you should have the following.

First off, you should have knowledge of soldering (and preferably, desoldering). Not a real amazing skill or anything, and you can probably find a book or a buddy to teach you everything you need to know pretty quickly. I learned when I was 7 and didn't use the skill again for almost 20 years but was still able to fumble my way through, so that tells you how hard it is. These are some pretty tiny components, so you should be reasonably confident in your abilities. Practice on some broken appliances first. You should also understand basic, basic circuitry. I don't even mean transistors and resistors and stuff, I just mean if you were given a AA battery, a lightbulb, a button, and some lengths of wire you could make a push-button light out of them. Because that's all I know how to do, and I succeeded.

Secondly, you should have a good assortment of tools, mostly small ones. The basic ones, of course: needlenose pliers, wire cutters, a craft knife, screwdrivers, etc. etc. You may also need a drill (for cutting holes in plastic housing), a small hand saw, a soldering iron, a hot glue gun, some small metal files and a continuity tester.

That last item, the continuity tester, is a life-saver. It's one of the features on your basic digital multimeter. These devices typically measure voltage and resistance and other such electrical stuff I don't understand, but the continuity tester is easy to understand. When you touch the two electrodes together it beeps. When you touch one electrode to one end of a circuit and the other electrode to the other end of a circuit it will let you know if there's a connection between the two points by beeping. If there's a break in the circuit somewhere it doesn't beep. Got it? Easy. It's useful for making sure there are circuits where there should be circuits, and just as useful, making sure there are not circuits where there shouldn't be (like between neighboring wires). If you don't have a continuity tester you can do what I used to do: tape a wire to one end of a battery and an LED onto the other, then touch the free ends to the circuit in question. My advice is to invest in a continuity tester though.

That's about it. A good curiosity and some enthusiasm will also help, along with quite a bit of patience.

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