Temporary connectors, what do you use?

When I am just testing out an idea for a circuit, I want to be able to create a temporary connection without soldering/de-soldering my Espruino boards - is a pogo pin the correct method to use? If so, is there any you can recommend, if not, what do you use?

Inspired by what I read today over at Hackaday "ViaConnect" diy pins.

That's a really neat post - I wish there was somewhere I could just buy a set of cables like that :)

Generally I find pogo pins to be a bit of a pain as you have to apply pressure to keep them in. I
use stuff like this sometimes:

• http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Small-Tes­t-Hook-Clip-for-Multimeter-8-colors-46mm­-Side-Opening-High-quality-480-pcs-per/4­40981318.html?spm=2114.10010108.1000023.­2.PVFwis&spm=2114.10010108.1000023.2.PVF­wis
  
• http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Flat-Smal­l-Test-Clip-for-Multimeter-5-colors-Tiny­-Component-Repair-Tool-High-quality-120-­pcs/447319820.html?spm=2114.10010108.100­0023.3.PVFwis&spm=2114.10010108.1000023.­3.PVFwis
  
  

But generally I use stuff with pins, and then use the 'dupont'-style wires to connect (I keep a set of FF, MF and MM wires). You can get 10-wide plastic holders for the dupont pins/sockets, which I then cut to size and populate to keep the pins in place for semi-permanent things.

Solderless pins, see https://www.sparkfun.com/products/retire­d/10527

Have you had any luck with those? I bought some thinking I might sell the Pico with them, but they were really hard to get into the board... So hard that unless you were pretty careful you'd have ended up breaking it trying to fit them.

I use 0.1" pin header for temporary connections. This is the normal 0.1" pin header, not the "machined" pins (which are narrower and round - not compatible with eachother). The connectors for it are referred to as 0.1" dupont connectors in product listings. You can get the pin header (male and female) and cables with the connectors already put on the ends on ebay for cheap. Typically you get like a 40-pin ribbon cable, with either single-pin housings, or no connector housings at all (which I prefer - but I have a set of housings from 1-10 pins), so you can pull off however many wires at a time you need. Avoid trying to put the pins onto the wires yourself, it's intensely unpleasant - I have under 50% success rate crimping on connectors with the correct crimp tool. Male pin header, female connectors on the wires. The other way around sucks - the male connectors on cables are are flimsy and don't make a good connection, particularly when plugged into low-grade chinese female header.

In terms of prototyping with cheap parts that I don't care about using again (ie, most of the time, particularly in arduino-land, where everything is dirt shit cheap), I frequently solder and desolder wires to make connections, instead of using connectors (it's such a pain to put connectors onto wires, and the pre-pinned wires are thin and not good for high current...). The prototyping board I use makes this particularly easy, since it's got big exposed stripes for each group of pins (of course, it's also easy to use with pin header).

IMO, solderless breadboard is junk, because the connections are so unreliable. You spend a lot of time trying to figure out why it just doesn't work, and then find out oh - that wire isn't making good contact... I don't think anyone has ever showed me a circuit on breadboard and had it work without them spending 10-20 minutes poking at the wires to find and fix the loose wire

I use this prototyping board - you can buy it (from me) here - I've got a bunch of variants available and linked to from this page https://www.tindie.com/products/DrAzzy/2­-x-4-prototypingproject-boards/

I also have one designed specifically for the Pico which might be of interest, though it may be more permanent that you want: https://www.tindie.com/products/DrAzzy/e­spruino-pico-project-board/

(disclosure - as I said above, I'm the one selling those boards, so obviously I'm a little biased - but they're also what I use myself, and I started having them made because I couldn't get anything that I was happy with)