ESP8266 Community Forum

Yes, that 3d printed part is exactly what I had in mind with my last post. It's really odd that no-one has commercially produced anything, given that we are normally overwhelmed with choice (and a fair amount of crap).

I also just remembered about a concept shown on Hackaday, whicg uses 'pogo-pins' (spring loaded pins), placed horizontally which can be retracted and the esp-12 pushed into place against the pin's tension. The other end of each pin soldered onto a stripboard. I have in fact seen a few variations and also some other designs for other microprocessors. Again I have not seen any commercial product, and they would not be quick to mass-produce manually by a hobbyist. The pins are cheap to buy and one day I may make a board.

My idea was to have protruding pads (basically solder nipples) on a board which locate on the esp's castellations, then have a spring clip on top to tension the chip onto the board's pads. It would be much quicker and cheaper to make. Perhaps some entrepreneur could propose a design and sell it??

On https://hackaday.io/project/28439-esp-12-socket-adapter-solderless-flasher

It reminds me of trying to replace disk shoes in a car's brake drum.

For flashing and development work I went down the pogo pin route. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2147460

This gives a nice reliable connection, it's cheap, and one can swap modules pretty quickly.

Obviously would be nicer if there was a good (cheap) commercial solution to avoid having to construct one's own.