So, I started looking around on the Digi-Key website, and I noticed that they have quite a bit of useful general information on their site too, in addition to the parts that they sell. Interestingly, Digi-Key employs a lot of people 24/7 to help with customer support, like their Applications Engineering department that is filled with nearly one hundred Engineers and technicians. Not only do they help answer customer questions from hobbyists and professionals alike, but they learn a bit of new things along the way.
Digi-Key created a KiCad library of real Digi-Key components that you can use if you are using KiCad. Indeed, I must admit, KiCad is getting really popular to use nowadays, more so than competitor gEDA.
20181227/https://www.digikey.com/en/resources/year-in-review
20181227/https://www.digikey.com/en/blog/the-start-of-the-digi-key-kicad-library
Chip-on-board LEDs give a bright, uniform light source that can be viewed from a wide angle, due to being able to pack the individual LED modules much more densely. The main disadvantage is the limited number of colors available. Chip-on-board LEDs typically require an external driver circuit.
20181227/https://www.digikey.com/en/articles/techzone/2016/aug/the-basics-of-chip-on-board-cob-leds
This is an interesting, a top 10 things to know before getting started with Raspberry Pi. Again, I reiterate, because this is important! I must note, however, that the comment about never powering the Raspberry Pi from the GPIO pins is not correct, especially in the case of the Raspberry Pi Zero that does not even have that polyfuse protective chip that is self-reseting and can be replaced.
Also, there is another such interesting guide about the top 10 things to know about getting started on an Arduino. Particularly interesting is the tiny Arduino models available from Adafruit. Oh, and Digi-Key also carries Adafruit and Sparkfun products, so that is helpful for you to be able to buy all the parts you need from a single source. The Arduino article also covers some very basic things to keep in mind when getting started on a project, and says that even the author, as a professional electrical engineer for over 10 years, still does the most basic of tests on a new board like blinking an LED to verify that they at least have a sane setup where they can control the board and see that it is functioning.
20181227/https://www.digikey.com/en/articles/techzone/2017/feb/10-things-to-know-before-starting-a-raspberry-pi-project
20181227/https://www.digikey.com/en/articles/techzone/2017/jan/10-things-to-know-before-starting-your-arduino-project
20181227/https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/adafruit-industries-llc/1500/1528-1020-ND/4990769
So, since Adafruit does so many interesting and useful things nowadays, what does Wikipedia have to say about Adafruit Industries? Oh, quite a bit, and I learnec a few other new things along the way too. MicroPython is a variant of the Python interpreter designed to run on microcontrollers. The BBC Micro Bit is a new microcontroller which is, you guessed it, made by the BBC in homage to the BBC micro. Like the BBC Micro, it as integration into educational curriculums. Zephyr is a lightweight operating system designed for realtime embedded targets. So, that is useful for looking into for the sake of my minimal systems investigations.
20181227/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adafruit_Industries
20181227/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroPython
20181227/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Bit
20181227/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zephyr_(operating_system)
Good article on power supply decision considerations, make versus buy.
20181227/https://www.digikey.com/en/blog/the-make-vs-buy-decision-just-tipped-to-buy-for-1-to-10-amp-dc-regulators
So, unfortunately after searching around a bit on Digi-Key, it appears there aren’t really any more good options for buying a surface-mount motor control chip pre-mounted to a board. Okay, well maybe there are, but there sure aren’t as many of those as there are of buying the surface-mount chips directly. So, my verdict is to buy some of the surface-mount chips like the good old Toshiba TB6612FNG motor control IC and hand solder it to a board myself.
So, let’s review and search for more info on hand soldering surface-mount components. Indeed, the general process is what you’ve thought you read before. You use a soldering iron to touch each surface-mount pin. However, there are a few more notable tricks that I’ve found. One is applying flux to the pins to help the solder spread and adhere correctly with minimal rework. Another really nifty trick is to just drag a ball of solder across the pins after flux has been applied. Surface-mount soldering can be done without flux under some circumstances too.
20181228/DuckDuckGo hand solder surface mount components onto circuit
board
20181228/https://www.instructables.com/id/Soldering-and-Desoldering-Surface-Mount-Components/
20181228/https://www.wayneandlayne.com/smt/hand-soldering-smt/
20181228/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiJOv3aRCYk
So, here I have an idea of my own to help ease soldering surface-mount components. Now, one of the problems with getting surface-mount components is getting the component lined up on the pads as there is no mechanical structure to hold it in place in only the designated pad locations. But, who said you can’t build a miniaturized version of your own such structure? Rather than having the indentations deep enough to be a full through-hole component, the indentations need only be deep enough so that you can line up the pins in their proper locations. By stacking up sheets of paper, you can easily design shallow trenches in which to insert the pins.