Orginally published back in 2004 I figured I better repost this because most of my traffic still comes from firestARTer 
Some say this is the greatest invention man has ever made, some say it’s not, others still contest that it is. Regardless, I now would like all of you to realize this electronic device can be yours. All you need is a few hours and a couple of tools, oh and about $60 USD. Depending if you want to make it fancy or not, it could cost more. But my total costs where about $60 and there is no reason it should cost you any more. There are a few skills you might need before you get started. Not to worry though, Soldering is really easy! Trust me, if my girlfriend can do it, so can you! On top of that, this whole project can be accomplished without soldering on a proto-board, but for practical use one would most likely want to solder it to a board, and then put it in a case. Before we start, I want everyone putting this together to head on over to Firestarter`s home page and print out the parts list, and download the schematics, and the .hex file that you`re going to need later. OK, enough talk lets get down to bussiness!
Above is a photo of the proto-board completed with all the electronic components. The large and small ICs are the heart of operations. The larger one is the PIC16F268, Now when you order one of these things they donĀ’t come programmed with all of the awesome programming that we need to get this thing to work! Firestarter said that you will be able to order them from him already programmed by him, and if this option is available at the time you are reading this, go a head and order one from him, it will save you a lot of time and money. However if you are one of those DIY persons, a good DIY programmer can be fond out on the net, try a google search. If that just looks like a whole lot more work then you want to tackle I would suggest the PIC Development Package from Spark Fun
Electronics, it comes completed, and is XP compatible. I ordered the one from Spark Fun Electronics and I recommend this to anyone that wants to save some time, it was really simple to set up! All you have to do is download the latest vesion of IC-prog open up the hex file you downloaded, select the IC that your going to program, and the hardware model (JDM if you have the one from Spark Fun), and burn that sucker.
All the other parts on the parts list can be found at mouser.com I got all my parts from a local electronical store in the town over from mine, I’m sure you will be able to find most of the parts locally, but mouser is a good place to find the Opto-coupler (and other parts) if you are having trouble finding one, or too. Also a converson table helped me figure out what kind of compactors I needed, not all brands do measurements in Pico farads.
Once you get all your parts, you can start putting everything together. The best way to start is on a Proto-board, it will save you a lot of time as you will be able to check if you have the LEDs positioned correctly among other components. One tip on putting the proto-board together, you want the 20mhz crystal and the two 22pf capatiors as close as possable to the PIC, you can see how close mine are in the photo above. Once you get everything setup and working on the proto-board, its time to move to a project board, and solder all the components to the board.
I’m no great PCB artist, and there is probably a better way to set all this up on a project board, but all I did was take the way I had it setup on the proto-board, squish it, and move it to the project board. It was that simple. the project board did take a lot more time to set up even though I had my proto-board to follow, mainly because of the soldering. I had flux on my hands for days! A few tips for the Project board: never solder directly to the two ICs, buy some dip sockets. And if you are having trouble finding a good power supply, a 9v battery works fine, I had my rechargeable 9v hooked up and synced for two hours and it didn’t skip a beat once. Oh, and a note on the photos of the project board, I’m using switches instead of buttons, it doesn’t matter witch one you use, but make sure that they are 5v when not pressed and 0v when they are being pressed. This site is really more of an overview than a actual step by step Tutorial but to go through every solder point would be murder, I’ll add more stuff as it arrives, ask any and all questions to the LSDJ-MC2 group.
Much love and respect to firestarter and the whole LSDJ Community.