DIY Quick-Change Sockets for Raspberry Pi Pico Bench Testing

Efficient production is a completely different animal than building a one-off prototype. In the world of fabrication, a welder might build a jig that holds parts together in the same way every time. In the world of electronics, a technician might want a jig to quickly function-test boards or flash firmware. Redditor WendyArmbuster built this jig with quick-change sockets suited specifically to Raspberry Pi Pico development boards.

WendyArmbuster teaches CAD (computer-aided design) classes at a high school and the students get to build robots that play soccer. There is a larger, more complex system to handle matches, but the students get to customize their robots using Raspberry Pi Pico development boards.

This bench jig makes it easy to connect four students’ Pico boards. The jig provides power and nRF24L01 wireless transceiver modules. But the most interesting parts are the quick-change sockets, which WendyArmbuster constructed for this task.

Those sockets have 3D-printed frames that hold bent spring steel wires. When a student inserts a Pico into a socket, those wires push up against the castellated edges to make electrical connections to the PCB below. There are, of course, off-the-shelf solutions to achieve similar results — everyone loves pogo pins, for example. But this is an interesting DIY technique that also holds down the Pico boards mechanically, which makes it noteworthy.