Radiant Rainbow Guide

Overview

This colorful rainbow is part of our weather series.

This is a rainbow solder-it-yourself through-hole kit that uses self-flashing red, yellow, green, and blue LEDs.

This board is part of our Alpenglow Beginning Soldering weather-themed series. This is a step up from our Happy, Angry, Chilly, and Surprising boards, featuring more LEDs and resistors! On this board you can practice using reference designators to match parts to their proper places on the PCB.

The radiant rainbow has the most LEDs out of all our weather boards with 11 LEDs. Instead of using just one CR2032 battery at 3V, we have included 2 CR2016 batteries that you stack (place in series) to create 6V and ensure that all the colors are bright and stay blinking for many hours! The purple soldermask combines with the red, yellow, green, and blue LEDs to create an almost full rainbow.

PCBs fabricated by PCBWay

$
9.95
 
$

Solder Resistors

Start with the resistors. Match the resistor to the matching designator on the board.


If you're having trouble keeping the board from moving when soldering you can use a piece of tape to hold the board down. Just be sure not to have the tape too close to where you are soldering your joint!


IMPORTANT: There was a last minute resistor value change. Be sure to solder resistors in order of their reference designators and not the printed values on the board.

Solder the Battery Holder and the Switch

The battery holder should "click" into place which makes it easy to solder!


*Note: The battery holder and switch are made of metal so they get hot when soldering. Be careful touching them during and directly after soldering!

Solder the LEDs

The color for each LED is marked on the front. You can pick which LEDs you want to solder in first but I suggest going in the following order: RED, YELLOW, GREEN, BLUE. When Soldering LEDs I find it helpful to only solder in 1 leg and make sure the LED is laying flat against the board before soldering the other leg into place.  If the LED is not sitting flat you can reflow the solder joint while lightly pressing on the top of the LED.

Insert Battery and Turn On!

You did it! Turn your board on and enjoy the dazzling display of rainbow LEDs!

The switch is marked with ON and OFF.

Match the + side of the battery to the + side of the battery holder.

Mounting Hole (optional)

We added a hole at the top of the Rainbow so you can add a spit ring or string and to be able to hang your board or wear it at a necklace!

Place Adhesive Pin (optional)

If you'd like to wear your badge, you can use the ahdesive back pin provided in your kit. Take the 2 adhesive dots provided and remove covering. Then Remove the strip covering the adhesive pin and place one dot on each side. Then firmly press to the board right above the battery holder. You can then pin the badge to your shirt.

Elsewhere on the Web

Downloads

How to download our BOM from GitHub:
1. Click the BOM button above
2. Right click over the raw data
3. Select save as and save the CSV file
Have any questions?  Contact us!