Was able to get rid of the rats nest on the breadboard

I can't really say anything for my soldering skills (I wouldn't pass this for quality control), but the results look a lot better. I really like the Parallax Board of Education for prototyping.  However, having all the wires loose like this really bothers me.  I was also having problems with connectors popping loose.  Now I have a simplified place to plug in my sensors and serial connections onto the Arduino and can focus on my interface to the RPi.



Sorry for the fuzziness of the photos, it looks like the iPhone 5 didn't get them too sharp and I was using a PicFrame app to couple three photos together.  Anyway you can get a sense of what was accomplished.  I haven't done any soldering for probably 15 years, so I am a little rusty. 

After I powered up the boards (smoke test), I did manage to wipe out the IR distance sensor.  Fortunately, the IR distance sensor was not that expensive.  It appears that the IR distance sensor was drawing too much current.  I also changed back to the Pololu Mini-Maestro but I could not get it to receive commands.  It looks like I have a power issue here which needs to be resolved before I go on.  I am not sure if I need to add a 5volt regulator on the board to get power from the Vin or not.  Have to think about that one.