LED menorah not working

oberon

_{I ordered the LED Menorah for my son and I to assemble. After assembling and soldering, it didn't work. At all. This was our first soldering job, so we may have accidentally connected some of the leads while soldering. But my understanding is that each LED that is properly soldered will work, and in our case none do. And the first day of Hanukkah has now come and gone. Any suggestions?}

Windell Oskay

I'm sorry to hear about the trouble.   It actually is critical to make sure that no pins or leads whatsoever are touching-- we call those "short circuits" and as you can probably imagine, they can cause a lot of trouble.  In many cases, just having two leads touching can prevent part or all of the circuit for not working. If you know that any pins are connected, stop immediately and physically remove the batteries from the battery pack before proceeding to fix the issue.  Applying power when you have a short circuit can cause the batteries to overheat, and it can damage parts of your circuit-- so be sure that you don't have any accidental connections before applying power again.  

oberon

Sorry, I checked the leads, separated them where necessary, and the menorah still doesn't work. My son is extremely disappointed.

Windell Oskay

>My son is extremely disappointed. 

I would think that this would be good motivation for you to look a little harder and figure out what the problem is.  This is a very simple circuit, and there isn't much that can go wrong.

- If it was left on for more than a few tens of seconds with the pins connected together, it may have drained the batteries pretty well.  Try swapping in a new set, to see if that makes a difference.  If the circuit was getting hot when it was turned on previously, it's also possible that there's actual damage to the circuit board or components.

- Check very carefully to make sure that there are no remaining "solder bridges" or other short circuits.  If you have other solder joints that look blobby, cracked, or dry, you should probably touch those up again.  If you like, you could send us a picture of the bottom side of the board, and we could help you find what else might be wrong.

- Double check that the chip is inserted with the correct orientation, and that the battery wires are soldered with the correct polarity, too.

- If you have an extra LED in your kit, you can touch the leads across the leads of the LEDs on your circuit board, to see if it lights up.  If it does, you may have inserted the LEDs backwards. 

Please let me know how it goes.