Advice for (ideally solderless) external plug and sockets for sensors & output

Projects General Guidance
1

Hello all,

I'm creating my first Arduino project, a PID Controller. It will be in a small plastic enclosure, and has two sensors and a relay output that I'd like to have plugs and panel-mount sockets so i can attach and detach them with ease.

The sensors are:

3-wire DS18B20 Temperature Sensor - High Temp Waterproof DS18B20 Digital temperature sensor + extras : ID 642 : $14.95 : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits
2-wire 10K Thermistor - 10K Precision Epoxy Thermistor [3950 NTC] : ID 372 : $4.00 : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits
2-wire Relay output for a PowerSwitch Tail IIU - Information.com People Search | Free People Finder & White Pages - Locate Anyone

I used a 2-pin DIN Loudspeaker connector (see DIN connector - Wikipedia) for the relay output, and a 5-pin DIN to combine the DS18B20 and Thermistor, but I found the 5-pin DIN in particular to be very difficult to solder.

Any advice for better connectors to use?

Goals:

  • Reduce chance of someone mistakenly making the wrong connections (including for the 2.1mm power socket in the Arduino)
  • Ideally solderless connections (2-pin DIN had screws, which was great), or easy enough to solder
  • Visually associate Thermistor and Temperature Sensor plugs and sockets with a similar look
  • One end should be panel-mount, the other inline

Any advice? I'm based in London, so would prefer products easily available in the UK.

2

but I found the 5-pin DIN in particular to be very difficult to solder.

You could try SCARTs or XLRs

3

You might look into something like the SainSmart sensor shields, there are two versions V4 and V5:

In particular, the V4 has buckled ports for all 6 input pins (you can use an input pin as output), and it has a separate 3 wire (ground, vcc, pin value) for all pins.

V5 drops the buckled ports, but it has more specialized ports that you might need.

Here is one source for making the 3 wire connectors:

I'm sure there are many places that have them. Somebody had just mentioned this site, and I had book marked it.

Another alternative is using RJ-11 (4 wire phone connectors, at least in the USA) and RJ-45 (8 wire ethernet). I can find kits for making both RJ-11 and RJ-45 in any home improvement stores (in the USA, Lowes and Home Depot). I suspect the RJ-11 may be harder to find in the UK if you don't use that for your phones.

A third alternative is the screw shield that sits on top of your Arduino, and offers screw posts for each wire. Here is one version (http://www.robotshop.com/dfrobot-arduino-compatible-screw-shield.html?utm_source=google&utm_medium=base&utm_campaign=jos). I've seen them available both as a kit where you need to solder the pins in it, and pre-soldered.

In terms of labelling ports, you can always get some different colours of paint, and paint both the male and female parts of the connector a given colour.