While I’m an avid model railroader, my electronics skills are weak. I’m looking for the appropriate connector for model structures. Let’s look at ‘either end’. End A is the structure with two or three LED circuits and perhaps a speaker. End B is the control device, an Arduino Uno or other such item. PRT 10853 Mega Pro Mini Connector looks good. The bare wire ends can easily be soldered to the bare wires.
What confuses me is what to do next? The Arduino requires male pins. Do I use an adapter and/or intermediate cable? (Sometimes, additional length may be required.) Thanks for helping out this comparative novice. Best regards,
Mark
You can get male header pins; that is, male pins with a strip of plastic in the middle. For example, Sparkfun part no. PRT-00116. You’ll need long pins on each side. Plug a strip into the Arduino female sockets and voila, you have male pins. Next, order some nonpolarized female connector housings such as those from Jameco Electronics, part nos: 103203, 103191… And you’ll need pins, part no. 100766. You can solder wires and then insert the pins into the header and mate them with the male pins you inserted into the Arduino female sockets. Jameco sells a crimping tool, part no. 159266 that makes life easier than soldering pins and wires. Have fun. www.jameco.com (I am not affiliated with Jameco or Sparkfun.)
Hi Mark,
framostan laid out some good options if you want to avoid having to do too much soldering. We offer quite a few options to convert from the connector on something like the Mega Pro Mini Connector cable or others like it. That specific cable was intended to plug into the connectors on the retired [Mega Pro Mini if you want an idea of what type of connector that plugs into. We carry a couple other varieties of that type of JST-PH cable if you wanted to use something like that.
Another option that might work here if you are comfortable doing some through-hole soldering would be to use a [protoboard/perfboard on “End A” to connect everything on a single board and then either solder wires and run them to your Arduino, or if you want something easily removable, you could solder [male headers and then run M/F jumper wires from that connector to your Arduino. If you are not familiar with how to wire a circuit on a protoboard, you could use something like this [Solder-able Breadboard which has each 5-pin row netted together instead of your standard perfboard where you need to manually create your trace like [this tutorial kind of demonstrates. That will allow you to have the wire from your LED and sound circuits go into one pin on the row and back out via a header or wire on another pin on that same row. If you have never used a breadboard before, [this guide is a good crash course on how they work and how could use one of those or the solderable breadboards to create your circuit.
If you want to browse, we have a wide variety of different types of jumper wires, hook-up wire or connectors you can browse through in our [Wire Category and [Connector Category. Both of those are pretty large categories so it might be hard to find exactly what you are looking for but the “Subcategories” listed at the top of each page might help point you to a specific category like [Polarized Connectors.
I hope this is not too overwhelming and gives you some good options to get started with this project. If you have any follow-up questions about these wires, connectors or other boards, let us know and we would be happy to help.](https://www.sparkfun.com/categories/389)](https://www.sparkfun.com/categories/91)](https://www.sparkfun.com/categories/141)](https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/how-to-use-a-breadboard)](https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/iot-power-relay#hardware-hookup)](SparkFun Solder-able Breadboard - Mini - PRT-12702 - SparkFun Electronics)](Break Away Headers - Straight - PRT-00116 - SparkFun Electronics)](https://www.sparkfun.com/categories/301)](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/retired/10743)
Thanks everyone! Soldering is something I’m reasonably competent doing. I appreciated helping your helping a novice. I maintain a ‘Modeling Manual’. It is a collection of tips and techniques and ‘standards’ I develop for my miniature world. Standards allow more time to be devoted to the hobby instead of reinventing the wheel. Best regards, Mark