Rolling Message Display Kit

It is easy to put together, however the jumper wires are way to close to the LED's so if you are not super careful it will short the LED to the jumper wire with a solder bridge. I used the finest tip I have and still a small bridge developed. So needless to say it has a poor design in my opinion, as they market this for a beginner. They could have made the board slightly larger to gain more space for the jumper wires preventing this. I am not happy with this project.

This is the second electronics kit I have worked on after completing the 'Elenco AmeriKit Learn to Solder Kit'. Definitely a good second project. The first 'Learn to Solder Kit' taught the basics of electronics and provided simple tools. So when I got the Rolling Message Display Kit I already had a basic soldering kit to work with and decent skill with soldering components to the board.The first thing I realized with this kit is that it would be more difficult and complicated than my first intro kit. The quality of materials seemed better and I could see the components would be closer together and cramped on the tiny board (unlike my intro kit which included a large board with tons of open space). But I felt up to the task!The instructions were clear and easy to understand, though minimal. I really had no problems at all while assembling the kit. Honestly it was so easy I worried I had done something wrong and wondered if it would work at all! But after completing the kit it did work. I added a battery and voila, the LED lights lit up with a Rolling Message. The message is customizable using buttons. There are about 16 letter spaces available and you can edit the message to say whatever you want in the space available. The only disappointing thing is that once kill the power by removing the battery your message reverts to the pre-programed message.One more thing that was disappointing but not a big deal. The kit was supposed to come with three button switches, but I was missing one. I was still able to build a functioning kit and use it, two of the buttons toggle through the alphabet up and down, so instead of having both buttons I only had an up button. The good news is that I sent an email to Velleman customer service and they promptly mailed me two more buttons, so I have a spare now.In the end I highly recommend this kit for anyone. If you are looking for your first kit I would go with the 'Elenco AmeriKit Learn to Solder Kit' just because it comes with a basic soldering iron and tools, but the Rolling Message Display Kit is a good option for anyone else. And it's cool because the message is customizable. I changed the message to say 'Merry X-mas' and put it on top of our Christmas tree (you can use a battery to power the kit, but it also comes with a 9v AC plug you can add).

the solder foil comes off when soldering, electronic part are poor quality. save your money do not buy this kit

There are 32 LED lights to solder but made for lots of practice. It was worth it and works great!

hey, well this kit is fairly easy to assemble took me about an hr to 2 or so the message is a bit difficult to read in light but not much probs at night may take several passes before you can tell what the message is saying i haven't hooked them up permanently i have 3 the reason was i had left over leds from other kits like the stars and i made a green one and an yellow one as well. they will only turn on with a 9 volt batt in the back with or without power supply hooked up so i have yet to test if they work off the power supply and don't run the batt down while plugged in any how good kit cheap message display as well.

This kit was easy to assemble and easy to program using the on board buttons. One thing I noticed though is that sometimes when I put in the battery, the screen displays a random dot and I have to take out the battery and put it back in for it to work. Overall it is a good kit.