*desolders Ethernet, USB and GPIO rails from Raspberry Pi to decrease height*
(Desoldering that shit from a Pi fucking sucks btw, no idea what solder or pads they use but it's garbage)
*boots up Raspbian to see whether it still works and to set things up*
...
Oh shit.. I need keyboard and mouse for this :') fuck me I guess... Long live planning ahead. Does there exist a KVM over TCP/IP yet? 😅

you could stick the SD card into another pi, set up SSH over WiFi there and then put it back

@RantSomeWhere oh, that's easy actually. You can create a /boot/ssh file and the SSH daemon gets enabled at boot time. Problem is getting it configured to connect to WiFi during the flashing process - no idea how the Pi's network stack works in that regard. Or Bluetooth for that matter :') so I guess that I'll have to solder a USB port back on there later on.

@RememberMe oh, great idea! 😃

Desoldering ist quite hard on "modern" lead free soldering. You have to make your iron really hot and be fast, because you don't want to overheat other nearby components.

That's the reason still nobody uses lead free solder when soldering manually.

Get the RPI Zero W.
It only has two Micro USB ports and a mini HDMI; you just need to SSH over Wi-Fi.

@ddephor usually I work at 470°C here, melts through it like butter 😛 on that Pi the biggest problem seems to be its "stickiness". It doesn't seem to want to come out of the holes with the solder sucker. But as long as you quickly heatsink the chips after the job, you can actually get away with dumping in quite a lot of heat, like when you're adding thick solder lines to the power traces etc.

Just create a file named "SSH" in the root of SD card and SSH will be enabled by default

@Condor I don't remember the details, but you can put a file with the wifis name and key on the card and have it connect

@Condor put this

network={ ssid="wlan-bezeichnung" psk="passwort" key_mgmt=WPA-PSK }

With your data in wpa_supplicant.conf in the boot partition

https://pi-buch.info/wlan-schon-vor...

EDIT: Syntax depends on your raspbian version, look it up

@david-hil ah, thanks! I've just found something similar as well.

/boot/wpa_supplicant.conf

ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1
country=US
network={
ssid="Your network SSID"
psk="Your WPA/WPA2 security key"
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
}

But apparently it needs to be indented with spaces... Fuck that. Tabs all the way! >:

As an alternative to SSH and WiFi preconfiguration, you can enable the serial port and solder 3 female dupont cable connectors to the header holes, so you can hook up an off the shelf USB to UART converter when you need direct access.

So...
Probably WiFi thing worked for you great!

Also . For solder skills response

@rsync @gitlog I'm an autodidact. Essentially I fucked everything up and completely sucked at it for over a year with terrible solder joints, until I finally got the hang of it, and also got myself a decent iron (a station actually). So persistence is key. The technique that I'm using on the other hand is mostly borrowed from GreatScott.

@rsync In my case, as a hobbyist (much much less than @Condor), I just learnt by practice. Lots of practice. I just look for kits on ebay, and build them. You can find them as cheap as 99¢ (or cheaper on auctions).
Also I like to desolder lots of things, which is a good practice too.

@Condor I love GreatScott too, he is quite inspirational. I need to get a good soldering iron/station, mine is just a cheap 60W chinese iron, and although it does do the job, it struggles with larger pads and ground planes. Also, I am gathering the resources to build an 8 bit computer kind of following Ben Eater's series, with some improvements I am designing, which should be quite a challenge.

@aritzh Oh, same here actually.. Mine's 70W though I think (edit: 75W apparently). Should be plenty, as long as you use a large tip (hoof, screwdriver or similar). That being said, I've never really had a whole lot of issues with larger joints at 470°C, even with my usual J02 tip.. just takes a bit more engagement, so ideally you'll want only resistors, caps and heat-resilient things like that in the proximity of that.. or if that's not possible, apply heatsinking to nearby sensitive components like IC's during the job, or quickly apply a big heatsink to it afterwards to let it cool down.

@Condor never though about using the heatsinks actually, mught be worth. Anyway, my iron is quite bad, so it only has a (very loose) potetiometer that controls the power, not the temperature, and doesn't even have universal tips. I definitely have to look for a better one.

@aritzh In that case, here I'm using this one from KSGER: https://aliexpress.com/store/...
Their marketing department has gone all bananas in the messages to their customers, but as long as you ignore that (and for the love of God, if they contact you about shill reviews for their products, don't give in to it! I've been regretting that so bad..) it's a pretty good bang for the buck actually. And it's using the T12 tips, so there's a pretty versatile assortment of tips out there.. and those don't cost a whole lot either, €2 a pop or so, and they've lasted me for about a year and counting :)

@Condor oh wow, it looks really good, is quite cheap, and most of all, your recommendation is a good selling point. I will save it to my wish list, do some research, and post a rant or two when I make up my mind