Soldering Pico to Protoboard

1

Hi. I have a Pico 2W with header pins already attached. I want to solder this to my Makerverse protoboard, but the header pins protrude a LONG way through the board. Should I:

  1. Just solder the pins to the board even though they are long?
  2. Trim the pins to a shorter size?
  3. Not do this at all for some reason?

Note: I don’t want to solder female headers to the protoboard because I want to keep the the project as thin as possible.

TIA.

Dave

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Trimming the pins to a shorter size is the cleanest option for making things more compact. This will allow the header to sit lower, keeping your board thin and less prone to damage or interference. However, you lose the ability to easily swap or reorient the Pico since it will now be firmly soldered in place with no extra room for adjustment. If you really want to maintain flexibility or find that the height of the pins is too much of an issue even with trimming, you might want to reconsider the whole setup. A more integrated approach, like using a surface-mount header or connecting the Pico via ribbon cable, could save space and make things more flexible. If you need proteus library for Raspberry Pi Pico, you can get it from here: Raspberry Pi Pico Library for Proteus - The Engineering Projects

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Hey @David296999,

I agree with Ahsrab292840 that trimming the pins is the cleanest option. Just be mindful to have the board facing away from you, as the pins can sometimes shoot off with some force. Also, double-check that none of the trimmed pins are causing any shorts on the board.