Gikfun Eletronic Hourglass led DIY Kits Welding Practice Board Blue Ray EK1886U

Full colour instructions are easy to follow. As with all of these kits, I always fit my own I.C. sockets. If you intend to build a few kits, I recommend buying an assortment of sockets. mostly 8/14/16 pin. I did pass the power lead through the P.C.B. hole closest to the on/off switch before soldering the wires. This acts as a strain relief and allows to unit to stand upright easily. At its slowest speed it took about 70 seconds for all LEDs to "fall". As an experiment I soldered 47uF capacitor to the solder pads of the supplied 22uF, laying it flat between the on/off switch and the speed control. This gave a maximum time of 4 minutes 15 seconds and a minimum of 8 seconds. Perhaps this makes it a better egg timer.

A bit finicky, but expected that so wasn't too much of a let down. 15 year old son completed it on his own, but one of the switches did break which we could order more of (not from the same place, used the part number and searched online). It did add unnecessary cost, but as I bought it for him to practice and explore electronics I didn't mind ordering the broken piece as I felt I was paying for the educational aspect of it and not the toy itself.

Easy and fun to make. The kit comes with everything you need to make it work but could be improved by adding sockets for the chips and maybe a usb connector.

While I got this as a practice board to get some soldering skills with circuits, did try with and without flux which wasn’t actually needed but as this is my first time attempting something like this I thought I’d try both.Anyway, while the instructions aren’t the best you can just copy pictures instead, while it sort of works it doesn’t work as expected as even though the lights light up at the top, you’d expect it to be timer based but nothing happened for over an hour of it been plugged in but pushing the power button off/on gets the lights to fall down and when turning it upside down sometimes need a little shake (but that’s to do with the switch which sounds like a mini bb inside) while also turning on/off to get it to fall.While I wasn’t fully expecting it to fully work considering it was cheap I was hoping it would, but It was fun to build non the less.

Instructions are terrible. Finally got it built, it lights up but not sure what else it does.

The media could not be loaded. Ironically I completely lost all track ofTime building this little project.It was easy to build and worked first time.Instructions included were very good.Possible improvements.- provide a little case to fit it in, clear on the led side and may be a battery compartment in the other side.- can the Variable Resister be swapped out for one of a higher value to extend the time each LED drops (4 mins per LED to make it genuine hour glass).- add to the learning experience provide an explanation on how the circuit works,- add a power connector to the board, soldering the power lead directly onto the board means you have to very careful when you turn it around (the wires might become twisted and break off).

There's a lot of soldering on this 2 piece board, once completed, you plug in the power and....Is that it?The LEDs blink down to the bottom, ( as sand pouring through a hour glass ) you turn it upright, and it repeats. That's it.

Great kit, fun to build! Would be nice if the IC chips were in foam to protect the legs but other then that I'll be buying again for gifts.