Stuff you'll need:
Not pictured:
Soldering iron (duh). Having a nice skinny/pointy tip will help. I keep my Weller at max setting (850 degrees F) so it melts the solder quick with little contact time.
Magnifier of some sort to check your work.
Lets get started:
Take your FFC and snip it off at a nice point. If its your first time, leave some room for error as you'll likely screw up and have to snip it again:
Now, take the snipped FFC and scotch tape it down onto a hard surface:
We now need to scrape the thin plastic layer off the end of it, exposing the metal leads:
Pic of scraping tool I use:
Continue down the line and scrape the whole end of the FFC clean:
Readjust the FFC to a nice angle that you're comfortable with, re-tape it down and then use the exacto knife to split between the leads (this is the most precarious part of the whole deal IMO):
If you did a good job, you should have something that looks like this:
Cut a tiny rectangular piece of double sided tape out and apply it so that we can bend every other lead back and have the tape hold it in place:
Done:
Besides helping hold things in place, the double sided tape gives the FFC a bit more substance, so as when we touch it with our soldering iron tip it doesn't just shrivel up into a ball of goo. That being said, we'll apply a small rectangle of double sided tape to the remaining leads sticking out the end also:
Leave the paper on the opposite side of the double sided tape this time, we only need one side to be sticky here:
Done:
Now that's done we can prep our wires, Cut them to your desired length and tin the end of each one with a bit of solder (you only need a little bit, overkill here is bad):
Apply flux. Not too much, just enough to help aid in connecting:
Hold wire in place with tweezers, its important that the wire is pressed down hard against the FFC lead. Start at the end of the stripped wire and swipe your soldering iron forward to melt the solder and make the connection. This needs to be done quickly (as in like under a half of a second or so). If you take to long you will melt the FFC lead, plastic, metal and all:
Progress down the line:
Once done, test all your connections with a multimeter to make sure you have continuity between the end of the wire and the end of the FFC.
If all is well epoxy/hot glue that side of the FFC:
Rinse and repeat for the opposite side.
Its worth noting that I've been doing this a bit different lately, I've only been soldering to the leads needed for the actual data lines on the FFC. So pins: 1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28 and 29. So only 19 pins to solder.
I've then been connecting ground and 3.3v to the wiikey as so:
Hope this helps some people. I think this method is way better than using a breakout board.
