Thursday 25 July 2013

Living on Edge

Monday evening we celebrated the new royal baby; we certainly did wet its head, we nearly drowned the poor bugger!!

Once my head cleared next morning, started giving some thought to the interfacing hardware...


As most modern PCB interconnects have very low pitch densities, trying to find something suitable from this era of computing, certainly proved challenging...  I started looking for anything with a contact spacing of 2.54mm (0.1in).

I found the ideal - single sided 10-way female edge connector at RS Components...  Unfortunately, wasn't in stock, Bugger!  Out of desperation placed a back order even though delivery is not expected for another month.

Was just about to close my web browser (Chrome, incidentally) when I spotted these double sided connectors at Rapid Electronics, and ordered one for next day delivery:


And the test fitting...


...certainly was a snug fit !

I can simply ignore, or cut the pins away from the side which isn't needed.  At least the connector itself fits neatly into the recess of the base.

Not sure what the two holes on the right-hand side are...   Answers on a postcard please


Cabling

Ribbon cabling, should be simple to purchase, unless you want 30meters of the stuff !

My travels lead me to SparkFun Electronics and this is why...


3ft of 10-way ribbon, sweet !

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10649







Checked out the related products, and discovered this...


https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10965

A crimp connector for ribbon cable that is Breadboard Friendly!!

I had not previously given any consideration to this end of the cable...

My idea is... use this connector on a prototyping board, and jumper out to the controlling computer or interface circuitry from there -  it wont really matter if that's a Raspberry Pi, Blackberry, or Blueberry Pies [cliche, sorry]  Cool, eh ?

So, order has been placed; should turn up in a couple weeks from the USA.

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