Jonathan Oxer, over at SuperHouseTV, has been running a series of video episodes on the Sonoff product line recently and I really recommend his latest. The theme of the video is Sonoff-specific hints and hint #1 is how to upgrade the memory chip in a Sonoff. Jonathan does a great job of demonstrating how to remove the chip with nothing more than “a big, old, clunky soldering iron” and a screwdriver. A picture is worth a thousand words, so you need to multiply that by whatever the frame rate of a YouTube video is. Watch it! It’s worth it.
I trashed two Sonoff Basics last night, pulling up the pads with the memory chips. I was careful, but pulling them up is too easy to do. I tried running wires, but it didn’t work. Now I have a couple of donors.
I finally found an easier way on the third and fourth. Since I don’t have a tiny pair of diagonal clippers, I used an X-Acto knife and carefully cut the leads on the old memory chip, after which cleaning up the remaining pieces of leads took only seconds. I may not be able to reuse the chip, but the ease, safety, and time savings is more than worth it.
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Chip,
Thanks for letting us know about your unfortunate experience with Jonathan’s “big iron” method. I used to do board rework for a computer manufacturer and we had all sorts of fancy de-soldering tools, but before the advent of hot air we always just clipped the legs and junked the old chip anyway; it was a lot safer than taking the chance of lifting a track (those were the days when just the CPU took up a 15″ square, very expensive PCB).
In the case of the Sonoff, I doubt that there will be many people actually re-using the original chip anyway, so your “sacrificial” method is a winner for anyone who doesn’t have a really big, hot iron, too. I’d highly recommend a small pair of “flush cut” side cutters, though.
Best of luck with future upgrades!
-John-
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