Does anyone know of a part number or source for the connected 2x20 header pins? It doesn’t have to the this exact one, but it was the first image I was able to find.
I poked around MT Conn Electronics’ website and could not find the on in the image to get a part number. I’m also ok with a 3D printable housing. It would be a bit tedious to transfer the pins, but it would be better than nothing. My FreeCAD skills are not up to making anything that precise.
Thanks in advance to anyone providing information.
Why not just get single-row pins and put them in? Getting them square is simple. You can feel when they’re in straight. Just solder one pin, then straighten them, touching the soldering iron to the pin as needed. Once straight, solder the rest of the pins.
Because this header makes it super easy to swap in and out. Single row pins tend to get bent much easier if you’re doing a lot of swapping in different micro-controllers for testing and dev work.
My favored approach is to use a small breadboard that I do not care about (and will not actually be using for any projects), insert the two rows of single-row headers into, set the board on top of the headers, and then solder them.
It has worked quite well for me – the only time I have had problems was when I was using a really cheap soldering iron that did not have a digital temperature control and which was, as a result, set too high which softened the plastic holding the headers together such that the tip of the soldering iron pushed down the pin into the breadboard.
It’s amazing just how bad the conventional Weller/Hakko/clone stations are. Going to a JBC or Metcal is going to be a huge jump in performance, but counterintuitively getting a Pinecil or one of the other crop of modern USB-C irons will also give the average user 90% of the benefit while only costing $25 instead of $1000.
I’ve used both JBC and Metcal’s professionally and love them, but I still just have a Pinecil on my desk…
There are some JBC clones that work pretty well if you get real JBC tips. I won’t promote any clone here, but if you can’t (and most can’t) afford a JBC then do some research and make sure whatever you get, even the USB ones, uses the JBC tips.
Back on topic though, I picked up a cheap desktop CNC machine and am working in KiCad to make a small board the LuckFox Lyra can be attached to, similar to the perfboard approach tabemann mentioned, that will have the traces to fix the audio pin-out issue. As soon as I have one that works I’ll make all the files available.
