“Like others here, I have minimal soldering skills (ruined a PiTFT with dodgy soldering, if that's any indication), so I jumped for joy at seeing these.
I initially balked a little at the price (nearly $10 AUD excluding shipping for three sheets of acrylic, some nylon screws and the male / female components -- it's more expensive than a Pi Zero), but it's worth it in the end and I promise I won't balk again.
I had to give them a fair whack with a rubber mallet to get them to move in, but when they eventually went in, I held my pHat up like a newborn lion and admired my handy work.”
“Oh man, I'm so bad at soldering! These a god/science send. They're not quite as stable as soldered headers, so repeated handling is a bit of a worry. But, for a largely static projects, these are a beaut!”
“Having a solder iron for electronics and having soldered a lot in former times I was curious how hammering a header into a Pi Zero W would work out.
Armed with the clear instructions and a hammer I quickly (but carefully) hammered the header correctly in place. This is simply too easy, everyone can do it, and my soldering iron now is furious!
Minor nitpit: the nylon bolts don't slip through the Pi Zero W mounting holes, so I needed to slightly turn and press them using a screwdriver to slip them in place. So setting up and removing the nylon bolts took more significantly more time than hammering the header into place.
This is really a very clever solution; at least for simple use cases soldering can be skipped. It will be interesting to see if in the long run this purely mechanical solution will work reliably, as I remember that fifteen years ago some big company was doing something similar with boards for industrial automation, but over time run into field problems.
Alas, five stars for a simple and elegant product!”
“Tired these and found them to give intermittent connections on some pins. I discovered they weren't quite installed correctly (my fault). You have to be quite careful to get it right and you need the a jig (of some sort) to install them properly.
After all that messing around getting them installed, even without my mistake, I found it would have been better, quicker and easier just to solder them in to be honest.
Thanks,
James”
“Be careful these solderless headers are so easy to use and work so well your brain may take a holiday and you end up putting yor headers on the wrong way up!!!
Ignore previous review”
“Great idea and very useful, have a problem with the Automation pHAT the relay on the pHat board is in the way of the hammer plate of the jig. However as it is a female header it is relatively easy to use the jig without the m3 screws and hammer plate and just use the base of the jig and careful hammering. What I did was push the header on by hand until the pins protruded slightly, I then used the base of the jig on a hard flat surface and using the slightly protruding pins of the header located it on the jig. BE VERY CAREFUL at the end by the relay as it would be very easy to give it a knock, which I am sure it wouldn't enjoy.
Other than that these headers are a brilliant idea and ideal for us decrepit old men with shaky hands:-)”
“Since I don't have any solder skills, or equipment for that matter, this is a lifesaver tool!
In a few minutes, I managed to fit the male header on my Pi Zero and the female on the Scroll pHAT.
Truly amazing kit, excellent idea, made me buy my first pHAT.
Great work Pimoroni!”
