It's been a very enjoyable project so far. There's a picture and my first impressions on my "blog"
at EM.
You can order up all the parts from
here, pile them into the board and solder them in place. It's actually pretty easy. It was much easier for me than my attempt at building MIMA-L with an ad hoc board layout.
The items on the list from McMaster are not critical to the operation of MIMA, though a joystick knob of some kind would be handy.
There are a few unused components I'd omit if I had it to do over, including the six pin phone jack and the transistor on the display board. I'd also solder the fuse directly to the board and skip the fuseholder.
You may want a temperature-controlled soldering iron. Use higher temperature, less time, and not too much solder on the connections that act like heat sinks, such as the diodes with their fat wires. I think the "hot and fast" approach is also appropriate for IC's.
Don't be like me. Resist the temptation to reengineer the product. This temptation strikes me no matter what I'm working on, and while I feel there's room for cost-cutting here, sticking to the plans almost guarantees success.
I was hoping to conduct my first test of MIMA + LB today. I piled 200lbs of cargo into the back, turned the key, and got a P1644 (bad connection between ECU and MCM, on a wire that MIMA doesn't use). So I can't offer driving impressions yet, nor have I tried any modes other than manual operation.
