my Nano 33 IOT got corrupted with known symptoms - COM port not recognized by Windows, reset button not helping, so it needs to be re-flashed. I found nice tutorials for AVR based boards (e.g. ordinary Nano) where the bootloader restore can be achieved over normal digital pins. On the SAMD boards, however, SWDIO and other pins (/dots) on the bottom side of the boards must be 1st soldered and only then the connection to programmer board is possible. With my zero soldering practice, half-blind eyes and shaking hands I have absolutely no chance to solder these miniature dots without damaging the board totally. My project requires Arduino Cloud + WIFI connectivity, where all other supported boards (e.g. MKR WIFI), have the similar "soldering" design as Nano 33 IOT. Can anyone see the way out ? I'll be deeply thankful for any good advise. Of course, buying a new Nano 33 IOT is also an option, but I don't know why/how it got corrupted and I expect the same happen sooner or later on any new board I buy ... Thank you.
Fortunately my soldering skills are good enough to have soldered pins to the pads and reflashed it using and ESP32 but I never got to the bottom of what caused the problem
If you were in the UK I would offer to solder the pins to the board and to reflash it for you but you are rather a long way away from me
Actually those pads are designed that way so the manufacturer can flash/test the board without soldering through the use of Pogo Pins
Here is a video of them in action: Pogo Pins in Action - YouTube
Of course you would have to build a fixture similar to the one shown in the video, but it's an option.
Thank you all for your comments and suggestions. Seeing that soldering on NAno 33 IOT is hard to avoid I decided to change the approach. I'll use the other board I have on my desk - Arduino Uno + I'm purchasing ESP8226 as an external WIFI device. In the end I'll try Blynk to manage the whole thing over the Android. I hope this will be more stable setup, let's see ... My trust to SAMD boards was heavily shaken
