I am considering purchasing an Arduino Uno, but can find no documentation on the IO connectors on the board. They appear to be the crappy Molex connectors. Can someone enlighten me?
cpat,
To which Arduino Uno are you referring and from whom are you considering buying it?
The only connectors of which I’m aware on the [standard Uno are a barrel connector for power, a USB connector, and pin headers.
BTW, what do you have against Molex?
I’ve used Molex connectors on my boards for years, including some very expensive professional units that were supplied to some prestigious customers. I never had any complaints about them.
I’m referring to the I/O connectors.
The problem I’ve had was a board I purchased with the male pins attached (.1 in apart, 5 pins). When I searched for mating header the only parts I found were housings and the crimp pins which needed to have a wire attached then inserted into the housing. When I attempted to do this, when crimping the wire on the pins using a pair of needle nosed pliers, the pins were bent such that they could not be inserted into the housings.
I solved this problem by searching thru my pile of old electronics parts finding a connector with wires attached.
You can’t do it reliably with pliers. A tool for crimping those terminals is quite cheap, and they are very reliable.
The tools I’ve seen at Jameco were about $20, and all I want is a 50 cent connector.
Which model did you buy that has male header pins on the board?
The standard one has female headers on the board, so you can use male pins, or just poke wires in the hole.
If you are stuck with male header pins on your board, you can just get strips of single row female headers, cut to length, and solder your wires to them. Here they are on sparkfun - http://www.sparkfun.com/products/115
I agree that crimping pins with pliers sucks - if you do get the tool though you’ll find yourself using it a lot in the future.
The board with the male headers was an accelerometer board, not the Uno. I have yet to purchase the Arduino Uno. I am attempting to purchase all of the necessary components at one time to avoid waiting a few days for each part, then work an hour, buy another part, work, wait …
Aha! Now it is making more sense.
So assuming the accelerator board isn’t a specific arduino shield, and would therefore plug straight into the arduino (posting a link would have helped :-)), the typical way to use this would be to plug it into a solderless breadboard, the use jumper wires to connect it to the arduino.
Alternatively, you could use M/F jumper cables like these: http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9385 to diectly connect the male pins on the board to the female header on the arduino. These cable are nice, but you could make a lot of them for the same cost if you wanted too.
The M/F jumpers appear to be a better solution.
Thanks everybody!
cpat,
If you want something a bit neater than individual wires, you could use one of [these (or one of its different-length kin) and some pins as gender-benders.
Eric](Jumper Wire - 0.1", 5-pin, 12" - PRT-10375 - SparkFun Electronics)