Take a look at most Raspberry Pi add-on boards on the market and you’ll find endless full-size, feature packed examples ready for robotics, I2C, XBee and more.
Whilst these boards offer great functionality for experienced ‘makers’, a part of me thinks we’ve forgotten the reason the Raspberry Pi came about – “To advance the education of adults and children, particularly in the field of computers, computer science and related subjects“.
- Fish Dish (Buy from the ThePiHut.com)
- Soldering iron
- Solder & soldering sponge
- Wire cutters
- Helping Hands
- Long-nose Pliers
- The Fish Dish PCB
- GPIO Header
- Buzzer
- Switch
- Rubber foot
- 3 x LEDs (Green, Yellow and Red)
- 3 x 330 Ohm resistors (the 3 small beige ones)
- 1 x 10k resistor (the one with the orange stripe)
- 1 x 1k resistor (the one with the red stripe)
- A few stickers!

The Fish Dish parts laid out
- Push the GPIO header pins through the PCB so that the metal pins are on the same side as the instruction text (LED1, LED2 etc – see the picture below). Use something to hold it in place – I have rested the header on the bottom of my Helping Hands here:
- Solder one corner first, then solder the opposite corner at the other end of the connector. This will then hold the header in place while you solder the remaining 24 pins:
- Once you’ve soldered all of the pins, we’re ready for the next step:
- First we will solder the 3 x 330 Ohm resistors first (the 3 smaller beige ones). Although it doesn’t matter which way round we fit them, let’s keep all the gold stripes to the top to make it look smarter.
- Poke the legs of the first resistor through the ‘R1‘ holes as shown, and push through so the resistor is tight against the board.
- Use something to hold the resistor in place – I’m using a crocodile clamps from my Helping Hands unit:
- Once everything is secure, solder the legs into place:

- Once both legs are soldered, snip the remaining legs off with your wire cutters:
- Repeat this step for the next 2 resistor slots (R2 and R3), using the remaining 2x beige 330 Ohm resistors.
- This resistor fits into the R4 slot (labelled “10K”)
- The process for fitting this resistor is the same as step 2, which should leave you with this:
- This resistor fits into the R5 slot (labelled “1K”)
- The process for fitting this resistor is the same as step 2, which should leave you with this:


- Start with the green LED in slot ‘LED1‘
- Push the legs through the holes in the PCB (remember: longer leg into positive)
- Hold the LED in place (I used a crocodile clamp):
- Solder the legs into place, and snip off the excess like we did with the resistors:

- The buzzer goes into the slot called ‘BUZZ’
- The negative and positive holes are clearly marked (positive to the left)
- Push the buzzer legs through the holes so that the main black body is the same side as the LEDs (remember to check the right legs are going through the right holes)
- Solder the two legs and snip any excess as before:
- First, take a look at the picture below for reference on the switch position:
- Just as before, it’s simply now a case of soldering the 4 legs in place, again, remember to solder diagonal opposite legs first to set the switch in place:
- Find the circle marked “Rubber Foot”:
- Grab the rubber foot and peel back the white layer to reveal the sticky pad, then push the foot on to the board, and hold firm for 15 seconds:
- You’re now done adding parts, so just go back and remove that film on the top of the buzzer:

Average Man
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