Perhaps a shield (daughter board) with the wires in question permanently affixed to the shield?
after you have built the prototype using off the shelf development boards, shields, jumper wires, etc one approach is then to build a PCB with the relays sensors etc and have socket for a microcontroller development board (the complex part of the overall system) - you can even solder the microcontroller dev board to the PCB
for example, a IOT trainer PCB with motors, sensors, LCD, keypad, LEDs etc and a socket for an ESP32 development board
There was a thread on the EEVblog forum last year about a source of good dupont jumpers:
I don't know if there was any confirmation of that source.
A strong +1 on the Busboard breadboards. They are good quality, and not all that expensive. I try to save money where I can (off-brand batteries, clone Arduinos, etc.) but I bought bargain breadboards from Ebay (or was it Aliexpress?) some years back, and it was one of the worst decisions I've made. If I challenged you to stick a bare copper wire into a spring loaded connector, but NOT actually close that connection, you would find that hard to do. But these breadboards were able to do that - unpredictably. I finally wised up and bought good breadboards on Digikey, and my life was greatly simplified. I think dupont jumpers would be the same kind of thing - not an item you want to skimp on.
The longest lasting, most reliable I have are from Schmartboard, but they are expensive.
That's an excellent idea! I can plug this ontop, cut the correct length jumpers from the 18AWG stranded silicon coated wire I have (from Altronics) and soldered to the shield and main board. That way the Uno can still be easily removed for programming or replacement.
Ps. @ShermanP , I'm liking your link to the better quality jumpers for development boards. Good pick up.
one way you can reduce interconnections (in particular if the interface is very complex such as a TFT display, wireless module, etc) is to look for development boards with the required peripherals and an onboard microcontroller, e.g.
- relays - ESP Relay 8-channel Module
- TFT displays - Freenove_ESP32_Display
- Canbus - Adafruit RP2040 CAN Bus Feather
- LoRa - https://heltec.org/project/wifi-lora-32-v4/