A recent project involved using an electric skillet to reflow solder some APA102C RGB LEDs to a PCB. The aim was to make a device similar to the Adafruit Neopixel Strips, but arranged in a 3×3 square and using the APA102C LEDs.

Honestly, each board that was made was a fail. Electrically, they all worked correctly. The failure was during the manufacturing stage – reflow soldering very small SMD components.

Just as an aside, Adafruit Neopixel devices use WS2812B LEDs which have some very strict timing requirements – this can be problematic for some devices that use software interrupts. Whereas, the APA102C LED is a chip that does not suffer from strict timing.

Each small PCB, contains 9x APA102C SMD LEDs and 8x 0.1uF 0603 ceramic capacitors for power supply decoupling. Each APA102C LED is the large white square with white circle. Between the rows of the APA102C LEDs are the SMD pads for the 0603 size capacitors.

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