Breakout Boards For Digitrax Products

[tstage]

Glad those are working for you, alloboard.  Even so - keep honing your soldering skills until your comfortable doing it.  It's a good skill to acquire but it does take some practice.

Aids that will help:

• A good task light - To see your work better
• Optivisor or magnification visor - Along with the task light, this is essential for doing fine work - i.e. whether you have good eyes or not
• Solder flux - This will make the solder flow and give you nice, shiny solder joints
• A "third-hand" - A weighted and flexible armature for holding parts, wires, etc. so that you can glue or solder them.  It frees your hands from the need of holding something while simultaneously attempting to do something to it
• Tweezers - Flat-nose, fine-nose, and locking tweezers - Locking tweezers can also double has a "third-hand" in holding something while you solder it

Tom

[alloboard]

     I will suggest that anyone out there with a Digitrax, SE8C, PM42, and a BDL168 to get breakout boards for those devices from http://www.lwh3.com I have a breakout board from LWH3 and they make installation a whole lot easier. These breakout boards are so wonderful! They eliminate the need of soldering. I no longer had to pay any attention to the complicated Digitrax manuals regarding soldering and connecting wires to those tiny pins that come with those boards I mentioned above.