Shitty Amateur Electronics - Part 2: Soldering Success!

Last time we were here we saw how soldering and me really don’t go together. A broken Raspberry Pi 3 now behind me and a new 3B+ on the way it was time to try again on the Pi Zero I have. I’d simply just try again with the same kit and see if it went any better.

And do you know what? It did:

It worked first time, was a solid connection, and didn’t feel loose. Interesting.

I did use some extra flux with this: was that what did it? Whatever, it was fine, booted up, and I was ready for another challenge.

It was time to tackle... the header!

GPIO. 40 pins. My RPi3s came with pre-soldered headers - no such comforts with the Zero. I’d have to do all 40 pins by hand myself. Luckily I had some header pins in my new electronics kit. And a nice flat table to lay it on while I did it.

So I just got to it. Bits of flux from the roisin block on the solder tip first, then warm the board and apply the solder. For the most part they went fine. Ends first, then each row. I did manage to get a bit more solder on some parts than I anticipated, but at the end I had a decent connection on most pins. But not every pin - some had solder on the pin, but not on the board, and there was no join.

Good job I got some solder wick. A liberal application of that and I finally had a row of pins that didn’t look like they’d been shot and were bleeding molten metal all over the board. I also made sure those dodgy connections were definitely connected. Annoyingly all this work burned a few bits of the RPi board, but nothing seemed to be damaged.

I’ll document my journey using that header in future posts, but for now I have some more words about the broken Pi3.l and it’s replacement 3B+. It’s actually the second one - the first one didn’t work when I received it. And now his second one won’t boot. Interesting.

I did think that the Pi’s rainbow screen came up as a test before booting from the SD Card. Turns out it doesn’t - I tested on the Pi Zero by powering up with no card in. I’d been using two cards that for some reason don’t work now. I have confirmed this because they’ve stopped working on my laptop. I have a theory that I killed them both with the flakey reset switch soldering. So it’s off to work to get one of my stash that I’d been saving and are unneeded there. Perhaps the new AND replacement Pis both still work and just need new cards... tune in soon for more on that.

Next blog: we’ll do an LED - the traditional “Hello world” approach. This series isn’t meant to be a tutorial, more a document of my efforts along with some pitfalls to watch out for that happened to me and some tips that I found useful. It may be fun to see how quickly the progression happens...