recommended cables and accessories for electronics lab - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: nour
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 27, 2015, 01:15:28 pm
content: Hi,I have mentioned before that I am building my own lab for electronics hobby and I just got my oscilloscope, of course the Rigol DS1054zanywayI will buy other insterments like fun.generator and power supply and I would like someone to recommend me some cables and some accessories that would be handy if I have themand lets divided them into 2 groupsA- a must have groupB- nice to have groupfor example adapters that I can use with func. Gen and oscilloscope and cables for connecting my circuits to the instruments that I may usemay be other stuff like attenuators that goes between devices or connections and their valuesI am not doing high frequency stuff for now max 100 MHZor RF thingsI really don't know the names for those things so I can buythanks

author: KL27x
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 27, 2015, 09:02:51 pm
content: QuoteFemale to female jumpers are my most important consumable test lead. You can buy them in separate-able ribbons of 40 pieces, etc. Pair with a good supply of pin headers, and the uses are many.Strip one end, clip on your probe cap, and tape it over. You have a female jumper probe. So now you can port all your signals of interest to a pin header, and you can easily move the probe between signals and get a solid connection without any fuss and without a scope probe torqueing things. (I actually take it one further and have sacrificed some cheap probes, cutting the entire probe off and replacing with female jumpers, using them as approximately 1x probes.)For breadboard, you can stick pin headers in the board and use female to female jumpers. (Premade male jumper wires are all crap. A lone 0.025" square pin, whether on a flylead or otherwise, is not strong and will get bent and/or will twist/turn/tilt in a breadboard hole; and most of the premade male jumpers are even flimsier round leads. A row of pin headers is durable/self-protected to some degree and does not turn/twist or fall out of a breadboard hole, once the row is inserted; each pin is held in a stable orientation by all of its neighbors, ensuring a reliable connection).

author: ajb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 28, 2015, 12:49:02 am
content: I agree on the female jumpers and male jumpers being crap. For on-breadboard jumpers, some solid 24awg wire in various colors cut to various lengths is the way to go. A bunch of double-sided make headers cut into individual pins adapt the female jumpers to the breadboard or permit female to female connections. For small test clips, I typically like to fit .04" d-sub male pins, which fit nicely into the female jumpers and breadboards alike.A selection of banana jumpers is also handy for connecting up power supplies. I prefer to keep most of my leads with stacking banana plugs on both ends, so it's easy to make multiple connections as needed. You can get crocodile clips with a cylindrical tail that will directly accept a male banana plug that turn a banana-to-banana lead into banana-to-crocodile as needed.The leads I use the most are probably the banana to .04" pins for connecting power to breadboards or mcu dev boards with .1" headers. I just used standard 22awg stranded wire, been meaning to get some nicer silicone insulated wire to replace them, but haven't gotten around to ordering the wire yet.

author: ShortCqt
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: December 28, 2015, 11:57:22 am
content: It would be useful if posters could include images of what they're describing.... Please?

author: nour
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 29, 2015, 03:25:10 pm
content: Quote from: ShortCqt on December 28, 2015, 11:57:22 am+1

author: Denton.Hess
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: December 29, 2015, 04:37:57 pm
content: Quote from: nour on December 27, 2015, 01:15:28 pmCable Breakout boards are always handy.Anytime you have to troubleshoot weather a signal is making it to where it needs to be, or if you want to check if it is noisy or has an amplitude problem... a breakout board is going to be your new best friend.Just Google "Breakout Board" images, and you'll get the idea.Personally I am very fond of "in-line" breakout boards, of any type.Breakout board design is also a good entry level place to start at for PCB design projects.

author: MrSlack
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 04, 2016, 10:54:36 am
content: Cables that I use more than anything are some home made 30cm stackable 4mm<-->meat hooks. I use them instead of meter probes on the breadboard for low to medium voltages/currents and connecting PSU to breadboard. Pomona sell ready made ones but I made 20 up in a batch one afternoon about 10 years ago for less than 4 ready made ones. They look like this:As for breadboards, low frequency stuff is done on Wisher breadboards with the bundled jumpers. 75% of what I do is on that.Got a couple of old Tek P6105 probes and some cheap clone ones as well.On top of that, a few random BNC patches and sockets, t-pieces and 50 ohm terminators, 4mm patches, a pile of random USB cables and adapters and a universal DC jack adapter set.Not needed anything else at all.

author: macboy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 04, 2016, 08:29:14 pm
content: I use all of the following regularly:Search ebay for "banana alligator" and expect to pay ~ $1.Search ebay for "banana hook" and expect to pay < $2Tip: the wire used on the above pre-made cables is usually garbage. You could buy the banana plugs, gator/croc clips, hook/grabbers, etc. separately and get some really nice flexible silicone wire and make your own that are much nicer. You can and should use stackable banana plugs (see below!) for extra versatility. You can also buy cables like the above with a BNC instead of banana plugs, but they aren't as useful as you might think... you should use proper probes with your scope.Search ebay for "dupont F/F" and expect to pay < $2These are available in various lengths, 10 cm and 20 cm are common and useful. You can peel off the number of wires you need, then super-glue the individual ends into whatever configuration you need (e.g. 1x5 for PIC programming, 2x3 for Atmel, etc.). Buy lots of these, and some 0.1" headers that they mate to.I have several nice pomona brand banana cables, but I wanted some very short ones and decided to make them myself. I bought a pack of 25 banana plugs like these for $3.60 recently.I pushed 20 A though a couple to test them and they performed well. Certainly not the best quality, but good, and very cheap. They are stackable end-to-end which is one of my requirements.Here is the direct linkto what I bought.