Ah this is perfectly timed--many of the old garden-focused azimuth / altitude / persephone day calculators are defunct and never handled the problem of cast shadows very well in the first place. Nice work!
My experience with 3.5mm jacks has been the opposite: every failure has either left the tip, ring, and/or sleeve in the jack, or broke solder joints on a multi-layered and typically unrepairable board. Or in the case of laptops, a failed microswitch for optical output failing and rendering it likewise unusable.
Granted, Lightning and USB-C have their own failure modes, but the physical construction and durability of 3.5mm plugs and jacks are a good reason to abandon TRS connectors.
My first thought as well.