I have been working on a project which will allow me to learn how to charge Li-ion batteries.
I recently purchased some simple PMIC's made by Texas Instruments. I received them the other day and realized I made a mistake in my purchase, the PMIC's were sot-23 smt packages.
I don't have much soldering experience, and most of my experience with electronics is with through-hole bread-boarding and through hole soldering. I hear a lot that smt is the way to go if your serious about electronics, so I don't know if I should consider returning them and sticking to what I know, or taking the leap into smt now.
Here are some things that I have to consider:
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I already have a breadboard power supply, which I intended to use during the prototyping phase for charging. I don't know enough about SMT to know if I can still use it in such applications.
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I can return the smt PMIC's, but the through-hole PMIC options I have found so far cost three times as much as the smt alternatives. And after reviewing some datasheets, I have found them to be way more complicated than whats actually necessary for my needs, I would be going from 6 pins to 16, with a bunch of added features I didn't need to deal with just to learn how to charge my first lithium battery.
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I have reviewed the datasheet for the smt's I purchased about three times now, and it requires less than a half-dozen supportive components, most I had already or have purchased, such as NTC resistors.
Based on all that, I would at least like to know what are my prototyping options when dealing with smt devices, so that way I can make an intelligent decision on whether keeping them is even practical at this moment.
I'm assuming the four breadboards I have laying around are useless, so what can I use to setup and test circuits with smt components?
Best Answer
Use adaptors to get you going... like this commercially available one, or make your own..