Hobby tech

The latest tips, tricks and news in the world of computer hobbyism, from Raspberry Pi, Arduino and Android to retro computing.

- Gareth Halfacree

Boldport Club

​Soldering kits have long provided a fantastic introduction to the world of electronics. From the pages of Popular Electronics and Elector to bundles purchased from Maplin and the like, most soldering kits have one facet in common: they’re designed to be accessible to the beginner and act as a training ground for soldering skills.

The Boldport Club, though, offers a different spin on the introductory project kit. Positioned as the equivalent of a ‘wine-ofthe-month’ club for electronics enthusiasts, subscribers to the Boldport Club get a new kit or other project through their letterbox on a regular basis. The only theme linking them is beauty. Each of the circuitboards in the kits is made by Boldport’s Saar Drimer, an expert at functional yet aesthetically pleasing designs, using the PCBmodE software he wrote specifically for the purpose. You’ll never see a right angle in any of Saar’s designs; instead, it all flows fluidly.

One of the first kits to wing its way to subscribers to the club was the Cordwood Puzzle, a board designed by Drimer to offer a challenge: the bag of parts, jokingly labelled as a reject, comes with no instructions and leaves the way in which should all be assembled entirely to the person wielding the soldering iron. A variant of the Cordwood, dubbed the Widdop and designed for the Wuthering Bytes 2015 event, was reviewed in Issue 148, and offers a fantastic introduction into the way Drimer’s mind works.