I followed the steps by Jim and surprisingly, the voltages came up good (I’ll have to let him know that one of the test points are wrong I think in the diagram. I’m sure he’s been informed though a thousand times).
Who’s Jim? Do you mean TK?
Guessing I was putting too much on and for too long. I decided I liked the omo approach - a little on the stain, the rest in the wash (was that omo?). Ie dab a little solder on the soldering iron and pin to get the heat transferring faster and then get the solder into the pad/pin/ on the opposite side of soldering iron. I have a $15 iron from Jay car - 25W. It seems a bit fat but seemed to do the job ok. Will only get better I guess with practise.
The cheapo iron won’t help, but you did get it right. That process is known as ‘tinning’ the iron.
The home page link http://www.midibox.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=projects shows the midimon in red and the link doesn’t work. There are other links to here though http://www.ucapps.de/midimon.htm
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That’s because there’s no wiki page for it. Feel free to rectify that situation 
I have used a kit from smash TV. I am confused about the J5, J5a and J5b. Smash doesn’t provide enough single pins for the J5 and Jim seems to mention that the single SIL pins aren’t used anymore or something.
Jim again? JimHenry maybe? All the J5 pins are there. There’s strips of DIL headers, and the two SIL headers are also included for backwards-compatibility. You can use either. So long as what you build matches the schematic, it’s all good 
I am not sure if I need to buy a resister array (the picture I found doesn’t really tell me much) or buy a board and solder in separate 10k resistors and switches?.
You can decide. I’d just use individual resistors. FWIW, the point of that picture is the dot on the R-net. It shows which way you should align the package. Obviously you have a different core PCB to that, so the pic does not apply completely.
The midimon diagrams show a single J5 array of pins (but smash and Jim guide towards not using this)
Jim? Bugfight? As for J5 you choose. Heck you could use half of each. Just stick to the schem
If A and B which Vs and Vd terminals do I use
You choose, they’re all the same.
This is my first attempt and the midimon search doesn’t come up with much as far as I could see.
Hint: If you use the search bar in the top right, you only search this subforum, not the whole forum.
Most of the stuff you want to know is about schematic interpretation or the smashtv board you’re using, not the midimon project (maybe google would be more appropriate than a forum search?)
My aim was to do a couple of straightforward constructions and then do further reading to work on more complex things.
Good plan dude. This one has some unusual hardware configuration but it will probably help you to gather up some basics and other useful info. Just so long as you wire it up like it says in the schem, all will be well.
