I just received my Arduino starter kit from Adafruit today and I've been playing around with it. I've been following the beginner tutorials on ladyada.net but I've run into a problem:
I finished construction of the proto shield, but after connecting it to my UNO board and attempting to use the shield and breadboard to light an LED, nothing happens. The LED refuses to light up despite whatever I do. I'm a complete beginner, so any help is greatly appreciated. I've attached a pictures of my proto shield. The problem probably lies in my shoddy soldering job, but I'm not too sure.
If the pictures aren't good enough, I can take more. The first picture is my attempt to light the LED, the rest are the shield. Thanks for the help.
Soldering the pins is not just to hold the header in place. The solder provides the connection between the pin and the PCB. You need to solder EVERY pin. Look at the resistor R1 in the first picture. The soldering of the lead towards the edge of the board looks good. The other lead does not look as good.
In picture 3, it looks like many of the header pins are not soldered at all.
Is the LED inserted the correct way? Once the legs are bent, it's impossible to tell from the photo which one is longer, so it's impossible to tell that it is inserted correctly.
Thanks for that explanation, I understand and will re-solder appropriately when I get a chance today. The LED is in correctly--the longer leg is inserted into the breadboard. And yes it does show 5V on those rail pins.