I spent a little time on my lunch break putting in the last few wires and the board has come up 
The flash from my phone has drowned out the LEDs on the board, but they were blinking as they should.
Since I didn’t have another voltage regulator handy I have used the voltage drop across two diodes from a bridge rectifier (a trick I’ve used successfully before with other 3.3v parts from Microchip).
Good fix Daniel.
How long ’till the new boards get there?
Dad
Hey Daniel, I do realize that it’s a pretty old post and I’m not a big fan of necroing stuff, but I really need help
I started getting the hang of electronics just a few days ago and my question may sound really weird for an expert like you, but I’m still going to test my luck and I hope you’ll be able to assist me. Here’s the deal. I’ve been trying to figure out the difference between a bridge rectifier and a rheostat. I checked a bunch of resources but I’m still not sure that I clearly understand the difference. When it comes to bridge rectifiers I guess I mostly picked up on some clues (mostly after checking his page with a video https://www.derf.com/how-a-bridge-rectifier-works-step-by-step-tutorial/) but it’s more complicated with rheostats for me. What’s the biggest conceptual difference between the two? Thanks