Performing A Chip Transplant

Hackaday posting article Performing A Chip Transplant To Resurrect A Dead Board describes a situation where  the only option was to try to fix a device, which in the end involved a delicate chip transplant. The board was the Pixl.js, an LCD board with the nRF52832 SoC with its ARM Cortex M4, RAM, flash, and Bluetooth LE. The solution was to find a  nRF52832 on a different board and transplanting it to damaged board. Getting the board up and running again took only an hour, including the time to document it.

The process is documented in Back from the Dead: How I Revived a Fried Espruino Board Performing a Delicate SMD Chip Transplant, Successfully! article and Hot Air Soldering nRF52832 into Bluetooth Module board video.

Q: What is embedded luck?
A: Embedded luck is when a chip transplant can be done without a firmware transfusion.