ESP8266 Community Forum

- Thu Oct 01, 2020 12:39 pm #88970 Hello, I am a beginner working with a NodeMCU ESP8266 for a university project. I have soldered the pins of the board off because I will be using it in a wristband, so I need to save space. Halfway through soldering, I plugged the board into my PC and it still worked. However, once I had soldered all the pins off, it no longer responds. When I plug it into my PC, the blue LED by the RST button is constantly on. Did I short a connection? If so, which one? Is the board broken? Any help is much appreciated. There are pictures of the board while plugged in below. Thanks in advance.

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- Fri Oct 02, 2020 3:11 am #88979 It's impossible for us to judge what went wrong by just looking at some description and pictures: you obviously did something wrong with it.

Since it's a university project, I suggest you do the next:

• Ditch this board
• Buy a new one
• Develop the software (and hardware on a breadboard if applicable) on the new board
• When everything works (after much tweaking and testing) get a Wemos, which is smaller than a NodeMCU and doesn't have soldered on pins, and use that one instead
  If you feel like (you're up to) it, you could even take a separate ESP module (not to develop with, but in your final design), but then you have to design all peripherals, like PSU, yourself: it will get you extra points though.

Assumption is the mother of all f*ckups. At least: that's what I'm assuming.

- Fri Oct 02, 2020 5:05 am #88985 Alright, thanks for the info. I think I destroyed a connection on the PCB or something, since if I press around on the board sometimes the LED next to the antenna (which flashes when the controller is connected to power, or when uploading a sketch) flashes. I even managed to upload a sketch, but clearly there is some sort of loose contact somewhere.

Thanks anyway! Good thing these boards are cheap!

- Fri Oct 02, 2020 5:31 am #88988 optically it looks ok, but you may have removed / broken one of the copper interconnects between the top/bottom layer on the pcb. Look at the removed pins for any minute "copper tubes" sitting on them.