The soldering workshop this year was for Open Source Hardware Universal Remote Control board using SMT components.
All files for this kit are at GitHub including hardware, software sources and Assembly instructions. For these who didn’t manage to participate, now the kit is on our web for sale: URC
This year we had massive participation of kids from 4 to 12 years old.
As the SMT components are bit odd to solder we prepared for them FOSDEM-85 kits with PTH components.
We were a bit concerned if they will not get burned by the soldering irons, but they surprised us as they were so precise and careful that all boards they soldered worked 100% from the very first time.
Just for comparison when we do soldering workshops with adults from 20 up to 70 years old about 10% of the soldered boards do not start due to problems with misplaced components or bad soldering and we have to help them to fix. So it appears kids do solder better than adults 🙂
The Minibot kits from TuxCon 2018 soldering workshop are also on the web now.
It was wonderful weekend with lot of fun.
olimex 
Jun 12, 2019 @ 16:53:19
Kids are conditioned to seek approval at all costs, so they try really hard. Adults grow to care a lot less about such things, we afford to err. But it’s a nice project idea and of course kudos for holding the workshop in the first place.
Jun 13, 2019 @ 12:28:29
When I was joung, I started doing electronics with the counterpart of this. It was called UIR (Universal Infrared Receiver), which I found on the internet, had a PIC12F508 in it and TSOP1736. The TSOP did the demodulation part, and the PIC translated the signal to RS232. With some Software a computer could be remote controlled with a normal IR remote controller. I have used it mostly for WinAMP.
I had to build it five times until it worked. First I tried on some jumper board, but I did always some mistake(diode wrong, not connection, wrong connection). Finally I have noticed that the PIC is a microcontroller and it must be programmed. My father had a programmer for it, and after programming it finally the circuit was working.
But still it was on a jumper board spanning over a 20cm*20cm area. So the next month I took always the biggest care not letting falling it down. Some month later I tried to rebuild it to become smaller. Now it was fitting in a DSUB9 case. Then I started to sell it. Over several years I sold 30 pieces or so. Not so much, but still it was a big success for me.
I still have one piece of this, so I will definitely by the URC.