Page 408 - Hacking Roomba

Appendix A — Soldering and Safety Basics 389

Other Tools and Supplies

There are a few other things that are handy to have around. A spool of hookup wire is useful
for making jumpers and otherwise hooking up stuff. Get the solid wire, not the stranded, for
jumpers and other short cable runs. The solid wire is stiff and holds its shape nicely. A 100-foot
roll costs about $5.50. Get a few colors.

FIGURE A-5: Fluke digital multimeter

When joining two wires, heat-shrink tubing is a nice way to both insulate and mechanically
strengthen the solder joint. Heat-shrink tubing comes in a wide variety of diameters and
shrinks to about 50 percent of its original inside diameter when heated (AKA a 2:1 shrink
ratio). A 10-foot length of it costs about $1.20 (it’s sold by the original diameter size). Get a
few different diameters, or buy a pre-built kit of selected lengths and diameters.
For other insulation tasks, electrical tape is useful. It’s a bit messy and becomes unstuck over
time. You shouldn’t use it if you can use heat-shrink tubing.

A hot glue gun from a craft store is perfect for tacking down jacks and wires. A few strategic
dabs of hot glue can greatly improve the mechanical stability of tall components. Since often
the only thing holding something up is its solder joint, if it’s going to be flexed a lot, add some
hot glue to stabilize it. Hot glue is also an insulator that is useful when you need custom insula-
tion and heat-shrink tubing isn’t possible.