DC Development

This recipe contains notes, parts, and equipment that's helpful to have on hand when developing and prototyping small boards.

Cabling

During development the ability to make small connectors quickly by hand is terrifically useful. It's often necessary to make jumper cables for a breadboard or multi-channel header cables to connect a microcontroller to a PCB. This section details the equipment and components needed to make such quick connections manually at a workbench.

Crimp Connectors

Crimped jumper cables like the below are both flexible and easy to make on a workbench with manual tools. I don't know what standard these adhere to, but they make use of a cheap universal crimp tool and show up all over the place on friendly electrical sites like Pololu and Adafruit.

Any 22AWG wire can be used to make these, but solid core is the nicest because it's also suitable for quick breadboard jumps without any termination. The best way to find wire is to search 'hook-up wire' on Digikey and then sort by solid core, gauge, and Digi-Spool as packaging. Direct spool suppliers are either hobbyist brands like Adafruit at high prices per foot or larger providers who want you to buy a 2000ft spool in one go.

Molex Crimp Cabling

There's a higher quality crimp cable system by Molex. It uses this crimp tool, these housings, and these crimp terminals.

I haven't used these yet, but I leave this here as a note for the future if I get fed up with the poor quality of the baseline cable.