I have purchased two of the Nintendo DS touchsceens with the additional connectors with the aim of integrating them into my interactive project using arduino to obtain XY position from the touchscreen.
I have already seen some videos from previous threads on this same touchscreen working with LED which is wired to an Arduino and am trying to contact the person who did this.
I am stuck on the first hurdle of connecting the absolutely micro sized DS screen outputs to the even more micro sized connector which has four pins. Basically does anybody know how to connect this as inserting it inside is not gripping the connectors and it is sliding out.
Once it is is connected could anybody advise what is the best way of connecting it to my breadboard - is there a lead that anybody can suggest as the pins are so small i cannot imagine that they can be soldered.
Any help at all on this would be great as Sparkfun have indicated there is a tutorial to follow with a connector … however the connector is there but so far there is no tutorial.
So you bought an SMD part without the ability to make a PCB for it. There’s not much you can do there. You can try designing a breakout board and putting it though BatchPCB.com. If you are good at soldering you can solder wires to those tiny contacts.
Sparkfun indicated there’s a tutorial for the touchscreen, not for the connector.
I just got two touchscreens a couple days ago and no connectors. One of the touchscreens I’m going to just solder small wires directly to the flex cable. I have a TSC2046 touchscreen controller and a breakout board designed for it, I just need to etch it. I can give my results after I’m done, but that wont be for a week or two and it’s not for an Arduino. I’ll order some connectors next time I order from Sparkfun for actual projects, rather than this test setup.
As for the flex cable coming out of the connector; I haven’t seen this exact connector, but these ZIF sockets usually have a locking tab. Judging from the picture the dark plastic part should be able to move (probably slide in and out) and squeeze the flex cable to hold it in the connector.
The SMD connector is for cables with a laminated backup tab and .30mm thick. The touch screen photo’s show what appears to be such a cable, but the cable on the screen just received has no laminated tab and is only .10mm thick so, as you said, the connector can’t grip it and it simply falls out.
I wrote to tech support and the person replying said he was able to get the connector contacts to make a connection, however a bit of force was necessary. The only force I can see making a difference would be to squash the connector by .2mm, but this would likely provide a very unreliable connection, if the connector wasn’t simply destroyed in the process. A better choice would be to apply something .2mm thick to the backside of the end of the cable, but the best would be to simply get and use a proper connector designed for .10mm thick cable.
I don’t think people here are using this connector the right way. If you just try to mash the flat cable into the connector its going to look like its loose. You need to actually open the connector up, insert the cable and close the connector again.
Bad picture, I was playing with some crappy macro tubes, but you get the idea here. The brown and white parts pull apart. The flat flex cable is inserted, then you press it back together again. My flat cable has no backing on it and the connector holds the cable tightly with no issues that it could accidentally come out.
I used the connector properly, but the flex cable simply falls out. If you have a micrometer it would be interesting to know the thickness of the flex cable on the pad you have.
.17mm may be thick enough to make a difference, but if you also got your connector from DealExtreme and although it may look exactly the same as the one from Sparkfun, it may be a different model designed for a thinner cable.
u need to slide out the black plastic part till it stops. Put in the flex cable and then slide the black plastic part back in. It will make the connection very tight
