Anyone have a low cost source for header pins (like on the Arduino) and the female connectors that plug in to them?
Also, I would love some low cost wire interconnects - where I can connect two wires together with 2, 3 or so pins and easily disconnect.
I know there is digikey, mouser, but it is always tricky figuring out what exactly is the best thing to get / best deal. Plus just for a bunch of connectors I think shipping is as much as the connectors themselves.
?
Ebay.
check out pololu.com, they have a lot of neat interconnect stuff.
I am using the male terminated wires in housings to plug into female headers mounted on a board. I suppose you could make these the ends of cables too.
I buy from dipmicro.com or their ebay store. Cheap and fast enough shipping in US or Canada.
Header connectors (especially female ones) tend to be expensive from sources like Mouser and Digi-Key. Partly because they mostly carry the best-quality ones, while the cheaper designs are usually good enough for hobby use.
NKC and Adafruit have prices on "good enough" stackable headers that are hard/impossible to beat elsewhere. Their design is not suitable for plugging in parts other than header pins (more-expensive ones have contacts similar to breadboards that can accept component leads), but you probably don't care.
You can sometimes find really good deals on ready-made cables that wind up on the surplus market. I like these a lot. All Electronics has been a good source in the past, but selection has thinned as manufacturing has moved to Asia.
I buy them from dipmicro as well. Thumbs up!
I haven't looked at the other sites much, but I know Pololu has a very wide selection of headers available. Single row, double row, 2-3-4-5-...10-11-12 pins wide. The terminated wires snap into housings that mate with the headers, or you can use the 0.025 sq post male headers instead. And the housings can me mounted side by side on adjacent 0.1" spaced pins.
The female terminated wires in housing can also be slid into 3-level wirewrap pins as long as there is only 1 level of wirewrap on them (or maybe two, I think we may have extra twists on our hand wrapped board).
Hard to beat for selection.
Gravitech has wirewrap socket strips for putting on boards, and "interconnects" that are 0.025" square post on one side and 0.018" on the other side in single row strips that I am using for my promini so it can be installed on the wirewrap sockets (being delivered today or tomorrow) vs being mounted up in the air on top of a female header using 0.025" square posts.
Have to ask for them, I don't think they are posted on their website yet.
The long tail headers from Samtec that I have only seen as part of shield kits anywhere else were discussed recently also.
Do they have other sizes as well? That's what I was after, different options for building up the rest of a board based around an Arduino, or buying just 6 pin headers (or 12 pin) to populate pro-minis with. I don't recall seeing when I looked over the summer.
You can buy the connectors directly from Samtec. They don't have a minimum order and you can order free samples.
Look up part number SSQ-108-04-T-S. They run about $0.60 each.
Thanks, the eBay route worked out for me. I ordered a variety of different connectors, header pins, relays, etc. I was able to get smaller quantities for cheap.