Wiring Recommendations

What's "best practice" for wiring 3-pin sensors and devices (e.g. signal, +v, ground) to an arduino? Most tutorials I've read just recommend connecting +v and ground directly to the equivalent pins on the arduino, which feels very sloppy and error prone to me, especially if you want to connect several sensors to the arduino.

Do people use terminal blocks to make the power pins more accessible or is there a popular shield that simplifies this?

Yes with only three ground pins and two 5V pins wiring up lots of sensors and external components can get messy in a hurry. It's not a problem if you are building your stuff onto a solderless breadboard, but that is not a good long term solution for many projects. The clever Asians have had a nice solution for some time now and I bought one a couple of years ago and use it often to wire up stuff quickly for a proof of concept test or whatever.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sensor-Shield-V4-Digital-Analog-Module-Servo-Motor-For-Arduino-UNO-Duemilanove-/130693385943?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1e6deeced7

Lefty

When using breadboards I usually run power and ground to the matching rails on the breadboard and then wire the sensors to them.

retrolefty:
Yes with only three ground pins and two 5V pins wiring up lots of sensors and external components can get messy in a hurry. It's not a problem if you are building your stuff onto a solderless breadboard, but that is not a good long term solution for many projects. The clever Asians have had a nice solution for some time now and I bought one a couple of years ago and use it often to wire up stuff quickly for a proof of concept test or whatever.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sensor-Shield-V4-Digital-Analog-Module-Servo-Motor-For-Arduino-UNO-Duemilanove-/130693385943?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1e6deeced7

Lefty

Thanks for the link. Yeah, as I research all the available shields out there, I'm seeing several "sensor" and "IO" shields that would likely make things a lot cleaner.