Ribbon Cables on projects.

[cprich22]

Hey guys.
I am making two custom made PCBs that I need to be able to connect together over about 4 meters.
There's 60 connections that have to be hard wired between the boards so I want to use a ribbon cable (or a couple of 30 core ribbons) with ICD plugs and sockets on the boards.
The problem is I'm struggling to match cables and plugs and sockets on farnell and rs that would work together.
I've never used ribbons before so I'm in uncharted waters and I'm lost.

Has anyone got any insight or better yet stuff they've used before and can just point me at a matched set?
Cheers
Connor

[cprich22]

Or even an alternative to ribbon Cables. Unfortunately due to the safety critical nature of the project I can't make the system wireless.
The only other way I could think to do it would have 2 Arduino talking to each other on serial and one outputs the inputs the first is reading (28 inputs only has to be one way). But I have no idea in the slightest how to do that at all.

[Glen Beestone]

Would these do ?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/272683818086
Ribon crimps onto them then the header solders directly onto the board.
or did you want removable plugs and sockets?

Glen

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[cprich22]

I need removable ones. I also need to know what ribbon the plugs take.

[Glen Beestone]

A common connector is 2.54mm pitch (0.1") dual row connectors. Sockets (which crimps onto cables) and pins which solder to PCBs. An example of this would be the pinheaders as you find on a Raspberry Pi

This matches 1.27mm pitch ribbon cable

This is quite a large connector size but relatively easy to handle
there are finer pitch connectors around but maybe not so easy to incorporate into a homemade PCB.

Either way I think you are going to have to make the cables up for the lengths you require and the 0.1" connector type is probably easier for that

60 or 30 pin is not so common but 20 and 40 is so maybe you could combine them to get your 60 way connection.

There is probably a better way to do this though by digitising the channels and sending them over some kind of serial bus that only takes a few wires.

Somebody can probably advise on this but you would need to define the kind of data you were trying to get across.

Another reason to go down the digitising route may be you might run into signal loss or interference running over such long cable lengths, again depending on the type of signal you are trying to send across.

Glen

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On 22/03/2018, 03:06 'cprich22' via North East Makers <north-ea...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

I need removable ones. I also need to know what ribbon the plugs take.

[Brian Degger]

maybe you could find something here? 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/sis.html?_itemId=null&_nkw=IDC+Latched+Boxed+Header+Ribbon+Cable+Plug+10+to+64+Range+2+54mm+Pitch+EB63&_trksid=p2047675.m4100.l9146

seems that IDC sockets are meant to be standard.

Though I don't know how well they will run over 4m.

Cheers,

Brian 

On Thu, Mar 22, 2018 at 7:16 AM, Glen Beestone <gl...@technologist.com> wrote:

A common connector is 2.54mm pitch (0.1") dual row connectors. Sockets (which crimps onto cables) and pins which solder to PCBs. An example of this would be the pinheaders as you find on a Raspberry Pi

This matches 1.27mm pitch ribbon cable

This is quite a large connector size but relatively easy to handle
there are finer pitch connectors around but maybe not so easy to incorporate into a homemade PCB.

Either way I think you are going to have to make the cables up for the lengths you require and the 0.1" connector type is probably easier for that

60 or 30 pin is not so common but 20 and 40 is so maybe you could combine them to get your 60 way connection.

There is probably a better way to do this though by digitising the channels and sending them over some kind of serial bus that only takes a few wires.

Somebody can probably advise on this but you would need to define the kind of data you were trying to get across.

Another reason to go down the digitising route may be you might run into signal loss or interference running over such long cable lengths, again depending on the type of signal you are trying to send across.


Glen

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On 22/03/2018, 03:06 'cprich22' via North East Makers <north-east-makers@googlegroups.com> wrote:

I need removable ones. I also need to know what ribbon the plugs take.

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[Gregory Fenton]

Why not use shift registers (parallel to serial on one board and serial to parallel on the other) thus turning up to 64 wires into a much more manageable 3 wires?

Should bidirectional data be required then a serial to parallel and a parallel to serial on each board will allow data flow and only require 5 wires for full duplex.

It's much easier to route RJ45 cable than a 60 core cable

Thoughts?

Greg

On Thu, 22 Mar 2018, 11:53 Brian Degger, <brian....@gmail.com> wrote:

maybe you could find something here? 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/sis.html?_itemId=null&_nkw=IDC+Latched+Boxed+Header+Ribbon+Cable+Plug+10+to+64+Range+2+54mm+Pitch+EB63&_trksid=p2047675.m4100.l9146

seems that IDC sockets are meant to be standard.

Though I don't know how well they will run over 4m.

Cheers,

Brian 

On Thu, Mar 22, 2018 at 7:16 AM, Glen Beestone <gl...@technologist.com> wrote:

A common connector is 2.54mm pitch (0.1") dual row connectors. Sockets (which crimps onto cables) and pins which solder to PCBs. An example of this would be the pinheaders as you find on a Raspberry Pi

This matches 1.27mm pitch ribbon cable

This is quite a large connector size but relatively easy to handle
there are finer pitch connectors around but maybe not so easy to incorporate into a homemade PCB.

Either way I think you are going to have to make the cables up for the lengths you require and the 0.1" connector type is probably easier for that

60 or 30 pin is not so common but 20 and 40 is so maybe you could combine them to get your 60 way connection.

There is probably a better way to do this though by digitising the channels and sending them over some kind of serial bus that only takes a few wires.

Somebody can probably advise on this but you would need to define the kind of data you were trying to get across.

Another reason to go down the digitising route may be you might run into signal loss or interference running over such long cable lengths, again depending on the type of signal you are trying to send across.


Glen

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Sent from my Android phone with mail.com Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

On 22/03/2018, 03:06 'cprich22' via North East Makers <north-ea...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

I need removable ones. I also need to know what ribbon the plugs take.

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[cprich22]

Its basically an array of 28 buttons in the upper console of my car, The PCBs just extends the contacts of each switch down the body to under the dashboard so I can easily plug devices into each switch. I really don't know how to do anything serial based.

[cprich22]

The signals are literally just closed contacts

[David Pye]

I'm going to have to sound a bit concerned here....

If it's genuinely, like ACTUALLY, safety critical, two arduinos are not the way to do is :-S

David

On Fri, Mar 23, 2018 at 4:30 AM, 'cprich22' via North East Makers <north-ea...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

The signals are literally just closed contacts

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[cprich22]

Well I say safety critical but worst thing that would happen is my foglights turn off

[Jon Davies]

Why not?

On Mon, 26 Mar 2018 at 22:44 David Pye <davi...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm going to have to sound a bit concerned here....

If it's genuinely, like ACTUALLY, safety critical, two arduinos are not the way to do is :-S

David

On Fri, Mar 23, 2018 at 4:30 AM, 'cprich22' via North East Makers <north-ea...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

The signals are literally just closed contacts

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Cheers,

Jon.

[David Pye]

Because Arduino libraries are not suitable for safety critical things.  

 Memory leaks, empty code space not full of jumps to recovery routines etc.  Not to mention hardware resilience, brownouts, lockups due to noise etc (far more common in automotive).   

If it was braking or steering or something similar it just isn't good enough.  Less of an issue for lighting.

They are good for lots of things but not really for that.

David

[Jon Davies]

Gotcha!  Wasn't thinking of the Arduino library bit for some reason; was more thinking of MCU versus something else, say, SoC or even a full computer system.  I'd say an Atmel or Pic MCU is a very good bit of hardware, as long as the software is robust (Arduino library exit stage left???) ;)

[David Pye]

Completely, atmel stuff is ok (though the automotive or military spec costs even more....). More just the libraries/toolchain aren't really up to it.