Hello everyone,
I wanted to use the female headers to connect wires for use with my breadboard but the male headers are soldered on so I tried to desolderer them and failed very bad I have never taken on a dual sided soldered board before and I did a very bad job desoldering and attempting to solder on the female headers thank god I bought two launchpads everything else still works on the board just no signal on the headers but I think that launchpad will still be use just less use. So I was just wondering why would they solder on the male headers it think it would make more sense to allow the user to decide which headers they want on depending on the application. Other than that the launchpad is a great product I started programming it in assembly and it is pretty easy to do that and one good thing is that I have a real debugger unlike the arduino.
The male headers are soldered onto the MSP-EXP430G2 so that it can be easily used with the BoosterPacks for MCU LaunchPads, originally specifically for the 430BOOST-SENSE1. When the MSP430 LaunchPad first went to production, none of the headers were installed. After many requests to have them installed, we made this change.
James Smith3I wanted to use the female headers to connect wires for use with my breadboard but the male headers are soldered on
Male headers are soldered on breakout boards because they usually don't wear off. Female headers, while looking nicer and not providing sharp edges or exposing signals, wear off after a certain number of plug cycles and need to be replaced. Especially if you plug through-hole parts directly in them. And as you already discovered, repalcing them later isn't the easiest thing.
Not soldering any headers, to let the user decide, also forces the user to do some soldering before he can start with the product. Not a good thing. And as Jason pointed out, the Booster packs come with soldered female headers so if you soldered females on your LaunchPad, you'll have to replace them to use the booster pack. Not good too.
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Oh I see now the reasoning thank you both for the explanation. I wish that I would have thought to double up the female headers to form a male to female adapter of well I guess I will to try de-soldering the female headers that I poorly soldered on the launchpad and see if that works.
James Smith3 I guess I will to try de-soldering the female headers