My goal for today is to solder the header pins to the Raspberry Pi Pico. I was not sure if this was even necessary, because the Pico has castellations on in for surface mounting.

At this stage I think the Pico will need to be disconnected from the LEDs to be reprogrammed so to be on the safe side, I’ll attach the header pins so the LED’s can be disconnected easily.

I started by making sure I had the two strips of header pins cut to the right length:

Next, I put the pins in place and inserted the Pico onto a solderless breadboard to hold everything in place:

Once I set up my soldering station and fan for ventilation, it took around 10 mins to get all the pins soldered. Here is the finished result: