We ran a total of eight heats this year at Supercon, so there were 48 participants. A great time was had by all and there were many successful attempts, including many from people who had never before soldered SMD parts!

The winners were impressive. We had many 4.75 scores (out of 5) but Bistromath did it in an impressive 21 minutes and five seconds. Kevin Jordan warned us he was going for speed and function and not pretty so he racked up an amazing 16 minute and 18 second time with a score of 3 out of 5. You can see the top six scores and times below.

Tools

The headsets we used were AMAZING and under $10 on Amazon. They had an inside lens so you could get 4 different magnifications (plain, double, plain+swing down, double+swing down). They also had dual headlights that articulate in four directions! What a bargain.

Lessons Learned

A few things we wish we had thought of:

We should have had water for the sponges. We managed, but you had to remember before starting each heat to get the sponges wet. Also, having it outdoors was a problem (the last 5 heats were outdoors) mainly because any breeze you had blowing could carry off your parts. 

We probably should have had one or two multimeters but we didn't. Mike and Beau managed to pull together some little testers that worked very well. The two resistors acted like probes (although some people would grab them with tweezers and use the tweezers as probes) and a red Sharpie told you which lead was positive.

It was interesting to see the variety of approaches people took. Some locked their boards down with tape. Others didn't. Some started with the big LEDs and some started with the smallest ones. Some people put the battery and CPU on first so they could test as they go. Some put those parts on last. There didn't seem to be a clear benefit to any particular strategy.

Leaderboard

Volunteers

We had a lot of great volunteers that helped throughout the conference, but the two stand outs were Will for just doing so many shifts and helping with the setup/teardown and problem solving and Beau for building up three of the four LED testers for us. Thanks to all the volunteers and all the participants, too.