Allan Caplan sent me a write-up and pictures of putting together headers on USB Host Shield 2.0. The post can be used as an assembly guide for the shield. The following text and pictures were taken straight from Allan’s Evernote which he kindly shared with me and gave me permission to repost. I just wanted to add that after assembly is is a good idea to load and run the quality control routine to make sure the shield works.
Enjoy!
Assembling the USB Host Shield (v2.0) is pretty well straight forward, even without instructions. Some people have complained about the lack of instructions, so here goes. This guide assumes you are familiar with basic soldering techniques, and basic Arduino know-how.
1. Unpack the shield. You should see something similar to this: two 8 pin headers; two 6 pin headers; one 2X3 pin header
Kit
2. Insert the pins. It should be explanatory where they go – along the outer rows, one side has two banks of 8 and the other has 2 banks of 6. Now, if you have a third hand this may get easy. When I do soldering like this I like to insert all the headers and turn the card upside down, like this:
6x and 8x headers from the bottom
3. Before you start soldering, make sure the header you are working on is straight!
4. Did you check that your header is straight?
5. OK, go ahead and solder. I like to work on each header at a time, making sure it’s straight before starting. Once done, you should have something that looks like this (from the top)
6x, 8x headers from the top
6. Time for the 2×3 header. Insert it like so. Again if you have a third hand this will be easier, if you don’t make sure your header is straight before soldering!
2x3 header
7. That’s it! If you did things correctly you should have a functioning USB Host Shield! Go ahead and fit it on your Arduino board (make sure it’s straight, I didn’t realize mine was crooked in the picture)
Final alignment check
8. You just soldered, clean up your workspace and go wash your hands.
9. Find the instructions for uploading software and running the QC program.