The Hotplate soldering has been achieved although not without burning a couple of boards until I got the hang of getting a way to implement a crude flow profile using the hot plate heat adjustment. An infra red digital temperature meter proved to be an essential aid to temperature control.

The assembled PCB is now being tested. One or two changes required but, much to my surprise, the Boost Convterter worked without any changes. The Solar charge controller seems to be functioning although at the moment it is operating from a USB supply and not a Solar Panel. The ESP8266 isn't yet working, it doesn't seem to boot correctly even though all the conditions seem to be as expected. I have used many of devices in the past year or so without problem so I guess it's just a faulty device or I have made a stupid mistake somewhere.

I've decided that on the next version I'll add some LEDs to give me more visual clues of the status.

Meanwhile I have been investigating cost effective ways of housing the board. One promising possibility is to modify a waterproof outdo solar wall light and I have sent for one that seems to have a 5 volt Solar Panel and a rechargeable Ni-Cad battery together with mounting hardware. Why does it take so long to get stuff from China