Ok, so here's how the assembly went down.
Keep in mind that I haven't soldered a circuit since 8th grade. Check out how old my soldering iron is
Here's the bits in the kit. Not much to it really:
Warming up the iron and caching up the instructions. I was really impressed with the step-by-step instructions on the site. Those combined with the super-clear circuitboard layout made for a really simple assembly:
I'll admit I started this yesterday with the wrong tools. Never do that. I had a soldering tip that was too big and solder to match, and I didn't have 45-degree wire snips to keep things tidy. My first two solder attempts were horrible, cloudy metal globs. So a quick trip to Radio Shack today to get these things, along with a desoldering bulb to fix my mistakes and I was good to go. As you can see in this shot, the board is quite tiny!:
Here's the USB connector. Notice the large amount of solder to anchor this in place as it will endure the most physical stress:
