First time assembly - no led activity, any ideas what I've done wrong?

[ivyen]

Hello!

With no prior soldering experience whatsoever I tried to assemble a bluesaab 3v3, knowing it would be a long shot that it would work. I think failed miserably, no led lights up when plugging it in to the computer with the USB->FTDI cable. I'm pretty sure I've put everything in the right place, the parts and the text on the board was easy to follow but there's a high chance I've soldered something badly or damaged some part.

I'm not sure how to troubleshoot something like this, any ideas what I could check? I don't know how to check if a part was damaged or if I have to redo a solder.

Else if someone wants to scavenge my board for parts that miraculously survived my handling or is intrested in clean 3.3 boards (2) or cd changer connectors (4) hit me up and we could probably work something out. I'm located in sweden, don't know how much of a hassle it is to send abroad but I could check into that if someone is interested. And I would also be interested in a working BlueSaab if someone made an extra and I can't get mine to work somehow!

[Karlis]

Hi,

First things first - don't worry; we've all been there. :) I myself destroyed like three or four modules before getting a good grip on soldering.

I would start with checking if there's power coming in at all. There are a couple of places on PCB marked 3.3 and GND where you should be able to check the power. Then there's the orientation of LEDs. They are polarized. If you look closer, on one of the sides of an LED (red ones), there are two green markings. Those should go to the side of resistors. The blue LED has a green "|-" marking on the bottom. I consider it as an "arrow ->". That also should be pointed towards the resistor side.

Hope this helps. Good luck!

[Seth]

if you can/want to, post (clear!!) pics of your board, and we can try to see if anything is out of place, or bad solder joint, or whatever.

Everyone has to start somewhere when learning to solder :)

[ivyen]

Did not know that about the leds! Tried to resolder them but pretty sure I did more harm then good :p Will try to lend a camera so that I can take some pictures, tried with my phone but couldn't get any clear images. I also don't own a multimeter so I will have to get one of those before I can continue!

But something is surely wrong, tried to upload code with arduino but it's not able to connect to it. Thanks for the kind words though!