I just received my Meggy Jr. kit and I'm very excited to start assembling it as soon as I'm done work today.

One thing I'm curious about though is using a socket for the ATMega328P - from what I can see, if I add a socket then I won't be able to use the handle set without making a modification to the carapice, is that correct?

It's not that I plan on making any terrible soldering mistakes or anything like that, it's more of a bit of superstition - I always socket my uC's and when I don't, something terrible happens.

Thanks & cheers!

-Stephanie

http://planetstephanie.net/

The microcontroller is one of the toughest components in that kit. I'd understand socketing the LED driver chips, but it's pretty hard to foul up the uC, except by installing it backwards. (In an awful lot of kits, we've never heard of any issues due to directly soldering it in place, except for a handful-- well under 1% --of backwards installations.)

We did, once, build a Meggy Jr with a socket for the microcontroller, and a corresponding hole in the handle set. But, there wasn't any benefit to it, and it was all a bit ugly....

Thanks for the quick reply Windell!

I went ahead and put it together last night without the socket. It's a lot of fun, I've been playing with a few of the example apps so far.

Great product!

Cheers!

http://planetstephanie.net/2011/06/03/64-pixels-of-rgb-fun/