Where did you pick up your diodes? I'm getting some for my kit pretty
soon and I was curious if anyone could recommend a website/store I could
pick some up?

you mean LEDs??  the diodes come with the kit, LEDs don't.

what color LED?

i could use a recommendation for diodes. i got the sparkfun keypads, and 
those don't come with diodes (or places for diodes on the pcb... 
shhsmaffsa!~)

if you can find a "matrix LED driver" that has built in ghosting 
protection you won't need the diodes or need to find a way to work them 
into the design.  I don't know of any buy months ago I remember seeing 
one.

the 40h kit uses 1N148 diodes, digikey P/N 1N4148WTPMSTR (double check 
that number)

I bet that digikey has through the hole kind with legs... rather than
the SMD ones that come with the kit. These might be easier for hacking
up one of the sparkfun boards..

It would probably be easiest to bipass the circuit on the board and wire
up your own matrix to each key contact... with diodes in the wires that
make up the matrix.

hacking the sparkfun boards with diodes should be a matter of using a 
dremel to break the lead, then expose enough of the copper on each side 
of the lead to solder down a smd diode. i wouldn't go for through-hole, 
it'll really complicate the assembly and make it more prone to fail.

building your own matrix (as was suggested) is not a bad idea.

and you've got the right part number, i posted it on the kit page.

i guess it's time to get a dremel. hopefully i don't break the thing, 
cause then i'll HAVE to wire my own matrix

the PCB itself is just fiberglass, nothing special about it.

the wires themselves are just wires in the fiberglass, if you screw up 
in one spot just cut back the pcb to expose more of the trace, put a 
thin coat of solder on it, lay a thin wire with a coat of solder on it 
across the exposed area and melt the solder.  a drop of hot glue comes 
in handy at this point.

a hobbyist scalpel helps to scrape away the fiberglass and expose the 
traces.

also on the button board there's nothing that's going to fry from being 
handled.

finish it in small sections, assemble, test, move on, it's much easier 
to debug rather than having 3, 4, or 10 different bugs to track down.

i'm a tad bit confused. i ordered the 40h kit and it didn't come with 
any diodes. are you saying i don't need any diodes for the button board? 
someone clarify!

The kit should have come with diodes. They are packaged in a long black 
plastic strip.

if the long black strip wasn't there, many apologies. e-mail me and i'll 
send it right out to you.

wooops! the black strip is there! was wondering what that thing was for. 
guess i was too concentrated on everything else i put it back in the 
packaging and forgot all about it. thanks for the help everyone.

tonedeft wrote:
> the 40h kit uses 1N148 diodes, digikey P/N 1N4148WTPMSTR (double check 
> that number)

uh, minimum order of 3000.... ?!

LOL

a search on 'other names'
http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail?name=1N4148WTPMSCT-ND
minimum of 10, for $1.00 if that works for you ;)

3000, ha.

a while back we ordered 66,000 of these.

well, .10 each is better than i was getting from alltronics: 
http://www.alltronics.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?&category=18&start=10

i guess it's still time to order a dremel!