In most of my last projects, I used nice miniature connectors from TE. This is, again, no sponsored post. If you ever evaluated connectors, you may know how overwhelming the range of products is. I like to introduce these connectors to you, in the hope you find them as useful as I do.
In this project, I had to connect 10 traces between two boards. There was very little space and after several design iterations, I found the Micro-MaTch connectors from TE.
They take very little space on the board which simplifies the routing and allowing very compact boards. Also, because they use SMD pads, all other layers below can be used for routing or components.
Requirements:
The connector has to be hand-solderable.
There has to be an SMD variant of the connector.
I like to have a male connector on the board side, to prevent accidental shorts if it gets in contact with a wire or metal part.
I like to assemble the connector by hand, without an expensive tool.
They have to be cheap, less than $1 per connection, even in small quantities.
Adafruit has had paid day off for voting for our team for years, if you need help getting that going for your organization, let us know – we can share how and why we did this as well as the good results. Here are some resources for voting by mail, voting in person, and some NY resources for our NY based teams as well. If there are additional resources to add, please let us know – adafruit.com/vote
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
