wires, connectors, enclosure recommendations

[kevin789900]

I have a couple arduinos for home automation iot, one in garage, one in basement. Using breadboard and a bunch of M/M M/F & M/F jumper wires purchased on amz and they are okay so far. I want to make some more 'polished' projects next and need to improve my wiring, and install into a commercial-product-looking-enclosure. Ball of wires on the couch side table only will last so long

I'd like to stay with mini-breadboards, because I always want to add one more sensor, or need to add some fixes later.

So the jumpers work great, but they are a little long and bulky to fit into an enclosure. I was thinking to cut them and add a crimp connector pin like this http://amzn.com/B00CGWUV6S , is a crimper required for these? Or can I use pliers?

Then I am needing to get a better way to quickly/reliably connect my sensors/power/etc to and from my breadboard as I move things around. Are there small/cheap breadboard friendly 0.1" connector housings with some retention and orientation groves?

Finally looking for small enclosures, preferably white so I can place these around house in visible locations (door/temp/motion sensors). The ones I find are typically $8+, black, no mounting etc.

All of this has to be cheap too Other wise it all starts adding up, and I might as well buy commercial z-wave or similar sensors.

[rw950431]

If you have solid-core jumpers you can cut them to length and strip them using a wire-stripper or (with practice) a small pair of side-cutting pliers. I wouldn't bother with the crimp pins. An ardunio nano or pro-mini has breadboard- friendly pins attached so they plug into your board directly. Otherwise learn the fine art of soldering.

For enclosures you can search ebay for "electronic project box" but they are surprisingly expensive for what they are. Alternatives include small food-storage containers from the supermarket, 3D printing your own at your local hackerspace or building one out of Lego.