headers for pro micro and similar

Development Boards Arduino
1

Hi all,

I’m looking for advice for using a pro micro for building a project with a pretty weird drawback. Namely, I am blind, so any soldering that needs to be done would have to be done by someone else. To that end, I’ve been looking for things that would allow me to work on a prototype without having to involve someone else at first. I came across the solderless headers y’all used to sell, but which unfortunately don’t seem to be made anymore :-(. So that was a no go. I later found press-fit headers from samtec.com that can be made into many different configurations. Does anyone have experience with those kind of headers?

On a semi-related note, I was wondering how headers are actually put on the board soldered or otherwise. I’ve got a few boards here that I had bought hoping they would be pre-soldered – turned out they weren’t :frowning: – but I couldn’t find any obvious holes, maybe they’re just too small to easily notice or maybe I’m missing something. If someone could give a description (without pictures! lol) of the process there that would be nice.

Lastly, I do have a few pro micro clones. Do those usually use the same type of headers and layout? I ask because the few I do have came with headers, but the headers they came with varied based on manufacturer. I know it’s a little off topic considering they’re not made by y’all so I’ll leave it there, but…

Thanks all!

-Michael.

2

Hi Michael.

Some boards have surface mounted headers, that might have been what you had on the boards that didn’t seem to have any holes in them. Other boards have small semicircles on the edges where headers can be attached. On the clone layout question, the maker can change the layout if they want, there’s no way to know what layout they have without consulting their documentation to see if they’ve changed anything.

We stopped carrying the solderless headers because our customers found them unreliable and difficult to use. If you’re prototyping, you might consider using the Aeruino Leonardo in place of the Pro Micro. They use the same processor but the Leonardo has female headers installed in a Uno R3 style layout and that would probably be easier to develop on