ESP8266 Community Forum

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.

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.

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!

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.