I just soldered up my Four Letter Phat (4th one I’ve purchased and soldered) and noticed on this one there are a few stray segments that show up as characters are displayed. They only show up on the character that is on (meaning, the characters that are blank don’t show the extra segment) and when it does show up, it’s the vertical segment horizontally in the middle, on the bottom half of the character.
I’m wondering if something I received is defective or if I messed up my soldering. It appears that all of my soldering creates complete connections and doesn’t create any shorts…
I’d attach photos, but apparently new users cannot attach images. [edit: images here: Extra segments on FLP - Album on Imgur] Thanks in advance for any help!
I did need to solder the displays on the board. I checked it several times and am pretty sure I didn’t bridge anything. Image here to check my work. Sorry, I had a hard time focusing the picture right. The soldering isn’t pretty, but I believe it is functional.
Some of them do look a bit iffy. Soldering is an acquired skill, it does take some practice to get good at it. You might have a hardware fault, best to fix up the soldering first though.
I finally got to cleaning up the solders and it’s all good now. Thanks for the tips! I figured any solder would complete the connection, but I guess not. Turning up the heat helped a lot as well. Thanks!
It’s also a physical connection in some cases. Like if you have breakout boards soldered to a proto board. Good to hear that’s all it was. It can be a bit of a pain to redo it, but its nice when it then works and you don’t have to wait for a new part to arrive to keep gong.
