Collaborate Disseminate
There’s two cases when hackers have to think about USB-C connector mechanics. The first is when a USB-C connector physically breaks, and the second is when we need to put …read more Continue reading All About USB-C: Connector Mechanics
When building electronic assemblies there is quite often the need to construct custom cables to hook things up. It’s all very well if you’re prototyping by hand, or just building …read more Continue reading A Simple Web-Based Wiring Harness Tool
“LEDs improve everything.” Words to live by. Most everything that Debra Ansell of [GeekMomProjects] makes is bright, bold, and blinky. But if you’re looking for a simple string of WS2812s, …read more Continue reading Remoticon 2021 // Debra Ansell Connects PCB in Ways You Didn’t Expect
![USB to Dupont adapter by [PROSCH]](https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/2022-01-01-USB-to-DuPont-adapter-feat.jpg?w=800)
USB cables inevitably fail and sometimes one end is reincarnated to power our solderless breadboards. Of course, if the cable broke once, it is waiting to crap out again. Too …read more Continue reading USB Power Has Never Been Easier
Anyone who’s ever put together a bill-of-materials for an electronic device will be familiar with the process of scouring supplier catalogs and data sheets for the best choice of components. The trick is to score the best combination of price and performance for the final product, and for those unused …read more
Military headphones, at least the older ones, are like few other sound reproducers. They are an expression of function over form, with an emphasis on robustness over operator comfort. Electrically they most often have high-impedance drivers and annoyingly proprietary connectors for whichever obscure radio system they were a part of. …read more
Continue reading Odd-Sized Military Headphone Connectors, Tamed!
The “Completion Backwards Principle” is a method of reasoning through a problem by visualizing the end result and then working your way backwards from that point. The blog post that [Alan Hawse] has recently written about the intricacies of crimping wires for plug connectors is a perfect example of this principle. The end result of his work is the realization that you probably shouldn’t bother crimping your own connectors, but watching him work backwards from that point is still fascinating. It’s also the name of a rock album from the 80’s by The Tubes, but this is not a …read more
Continue reading The (Unnecessary?) Art of Connector Crimping
Wiring — as in plugging wires together and crimping connectors, not the Arduino IDE thingy — is an incredibly deep subject. We all know the lineman’s splice is the best way to solder two wires together, and NASA’s guide to cables and connectors is required reading around these parts. However, there’s a lot that can be said about connectors and cabling, and one of the best people to explain it all is Bradley Gawthrop. He spent the last ten years building pipe organs, and with that comes tens of thousands of relays, solenoids, switches, and valves. All of these parts …read more
Continue reading Bradley Gawthrop: What You Need To Know About Wiring
PCB makers Dirty made a name for themselves in the prototype PCB biz, with a convenient web form and numerous options for PCB color, thickness, layers, silk screening, and so on. Now they’ve branched out into custom cabling with Dirty Cables.
You can design it yourself by dragging wires and connectors out of a sidebar and arranging them on a workspace, deciding which wire goes to what pin of the connector. Your choices for wires include various gauges and ribbon configurations. You choose a color (they have eleven) select connectors and drag those out too–choose from 17 cable-to-cable and cable-to-board …read more
I have a love/hate relationship with the crocodile clip. Nothing is so quick to lash together a few half-baked prototype boards on your desk, but nothing ends up in such a tangle so quickly, either. I love the range of pretty colors that crocodiles come in, as well as the easy ability to just clip on to the side of a PCB, or any old loose wire. But they come loose, they can have intermittent contacts, and we’re not even sure if there is such a thing as a current rating for them.
When [WarriorRocker] wrote in asking what we …read more
