BMP085 sensor soldering

[Steve Chamberlin]

I built another Logger Mini today. It went pretty smoothly, and I was able to finish it in about two hours, going slowly and carefully. By far the hardest part is soldering the BMP085 sensor, with its pins hidden under the body of the chip. I pre-tinned all eight pads on the PCB, then reheated them as I pressed down on the chip from above, so the solder under the pin would melt too and bond to it. Sounds OK in theory, but it took me about 26 tries before I was finally able to get a successful I2C connection to the sensor.

I think I need to get a heat gun, which would probably make this step much easier. If I do another one without a heat gun, I'll try pre-tinning both the PCB pads and the BMP085 pins, and see if that makes it any easier.