I had a bunch of Adafruit Metro Minis to solder up for a workshop I’m teaching, and –as usual — almost all the header strips were longer than they needed to be. I guess it’s much quicker to pack a few extra than to cut each strip to precisely the right length, and the offcuts will certainly find use.

But the cool thing is that the metro mini’s mounting holes are placed just right so that you can just jam the entire header strip onto the board and leave the excess hanging over the end. Then, after everything is soldered, go back and clip. Definitely faster, and almost certainly saved me from counting wrong on at least one strip. I don’t know if it was an intentional part of the design or accidental, but if it was accidental please do it again.

As you can see from the closeup, the mounting hole isn’t exactly in line with the headers, so there’s a little bit of a jam that holds the headers in place. Better yet. (Oh, and just by the way, I was originally planning to use Trinkets, but the short-duration USB thing is one more headache for students who aren’t that computer-savvy in the first place.)