$50 Robot Salvage

[walkercreations]

Hello everyone,

After a very rough year in my personal life I am finally able to settle back into my own place and start doing what I enjoy and that is tinkering. I had started the $50 Robot last year and had gotten as far as assembling the control unit. Last night I was going over the work I had done and found a number of bad or missing connections. I guess mixing trying to solder a robot brain and a bad relationship is never a good thing. Anyway, my question is, I'm thinking about disassembling the whole thing and starting over. Once I desolder the components, is it advisable to use them again or should I just buy new components?

[rbtying]

The most expensive components on the $50.00 robot board are the servos and programmer - neither of which are soldered on.  If you socketed (like you should have) the microcontroller, just pull that off that board, gently, and buy a new socket.  You won't get much out of desoldering the regulator and the other passives - they're pretty cheap anyways, so you may as well just buy new ones.

[walkercreations]

Thanks for the reply. That was my thinking but was just curious as to what others thought and have done. I will definitely go that route then.