Although these pages show the PiCowbell Proto, the soldering instructions are applicable for all PiCowbell boards.
There are four ways to get your PiCowbell board working with your Pico. To keep things flexible, PiCowbells do not come with headers: there's a lot of possible configurations and we stock various headers depending on how you want to solder and attach. Especially since you want the Pico on top, so that the BOOTSEL button and LED are accessible.
The options are as follows.
- Use the Pico Stacking Headers if you want to be able to plug into a breadboard or other accessory with sockets.
- Use the Pico Socket Headers if you want to plug directly into the Pico and have a nice solid connection that doesn't have any poking-out-bits.
- For some PiCowbells: Use the Short Socket Headers for a very slim but pluggable design, note that you'll want to trim down the Pico's headers or use the short plug headers on the Pico to have a skinny sandwich.
- For some PiCowbells: Solder the PiCowbell directly to the standard headers already soldered to your Pico. Of course this is very compact and inexpensive but you won't be able to remove the PiCowbell. However, this method is not possible for some PiCowbell variants depending on the clearance of the components on the PiCowbell (i.e. the PiCowbell Adalogger and its coin cell battery holder).
The next page shows how to solder standard headers onto a Pico board. The following four pages walk you through each type of PiCowbell assembly so you can choose the one that will work best for you!
You MUST solder all of the pins for the PiCowbell to work! Soldering only a few pins, or not soldering at all are not sufficient!
If you're unsure about soldering up the Pico and PiCowbell, check out our FAQ on soldering.
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