Arduino Mega IDC connector

[Robert Hart]

Hi Guys,

On the Arduino Mega 2560 the digital I/O socket is a 36 way dual row IDC
connector, 32 way plug ribbon cables connector are not that common.
What do people commonly use to attach multi wire cables to this. Surely
that don't just attach a pin at a time or PCB shields.

Robert

[Robert Hart]

On 15/05/2012 4:21 PM, Robert Hart wrote:
> 32 way
36way

[Ken]

Computer drive cables? I have a few laying around.

Ken.

On May 15, 2012 10:16 PM, "Jorn" <dr....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I'd suggest one of these Robert, just ignore the extra 4 pins.
>
> http://www.pcaccessories.com/shopexd.asp?id=519&bc=no
>
> Jorn Navarre
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>
> On May 15, 3:52 pm, Robert Hart <rob...@hardhack.org.au> wrote:
> > On 15/05/2012 4:21 PM, Robert Hart wrote:> 32 way
> >
> > 36way
>

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[Steven Pickles]

These suggestions are female sockets, Robert is looking for a male plug to plug in to the extended data connector along the back edge of the arduino mega. On any of the projects I've used that need to connect to a few cables, I just ended up wiring directly to male header strips. as soon as that gets too fiddly you probably want to be making a shield. i'm guessing it's a rare case where you want to connect that whole bank of i/o's to one device as a group. normally the shield would be there to route the various i/o's in that bank to whatever connector is appropriate for each device.

pix

[Ken]

Computer drive cables with male/male pin strips between?
Ken.

[Robert Hart]

Spot on pix, I thought I might be missing something after making this, cheers Robert

[Steven Pickles]

Great work, that makes the hacky solution look pretty damned nice :)

[Robert Hart]

Sadly I cocked-up the wiring at the other end and now its too short, so I have to do it again :(

[Steven Pickles]

I was thinking if you put that header into some perfboard you would have a much more physically robust connector.

[Jamie Mackenzie]

Could you use the straight headers you have as a sex-changer and then make use of the female sockets that other have mentioned?

Bit of a hack but that's our middle name :)

[Jamie Mackenzie]

Or these seem to suggest that they can be connected to female headers:

http://littlebirdelectronics.com/products/01-254mm-crimp-connector-housing-2x16-pin-5-pack 

I assume you would need to buy some crimp pins or something.

[Ken]

Easier to use a female IDC connector and ribbon cable.

Ken.

[Robert Hart]

That looks good Jamie and they do have male crimp pins. 
http://littlebirdelectronics.com/products/male-crimp-pins-for-01-housings-100-pack

All Male IDC connectors for ribbon cables have a shroud around the pins, so it would need to be 36way ( which I can't find) to fit over the whole connector on the Mega.  Anything smaller requires the shroud to be snipped off damaging the ribbon cable clamp :(

Robert

[Steven Pickles]

I'm in aztronics right now and 40way is quite common. You could bend out the two end pairs of pins to avoid misalignment.

[Jamie Mackenzie]

Yeh, I did find that later Robert.  Didn't want to go overboard with the emails though.

Have fun crimping :) 

[Damien P]

On May 15, 3:51 pm, Robert Hart <rob...@hardhack.org.au> wrote:
> On the Arduino Mega 2560 the digital I/O socket is a 36 way dual row IDC
> connector,

The SPI pins lie scattered about this header, so keep that in mind if
you need that.

[Robert Hart]

Dam!, the website http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardMega is a little
unclear about pin-outs, isn't it?

I was just going to connect the 18 outputs (+5V TTL Normally High,
Pulses are Low) from pins 36 through to 53. 9 of these outputs are an
X coordinates and the other 9 are a Y coordinates.

I've been more concerned about the electronics of the project
http://www.hardhack.org.au/cosmicpixel rather than the I/O software side
of things.

So I thought I'd just work on that as an ongoing exercise latter once it
was up and running, as I'm a real n00b when it comes to coding an
Arduino. Keep saying I'm going to learn and never get past the first
tutorial.

So I have no idea really how I was going to use the information or how
to process it. Realistically the output of this project will be a
matrix of 81 single colour LEDS (which I know works and can do
relatively easily) and I was hoping something similar on a computer (eg
81 colour blocks on a screen) at some latter stage. Ideally but I think
not realist for me something like this http://youtu.be/YSAC2zvW3uI.

Robert

[Damien P]

On May 22, 9:58 am, Robert Hart <rob...@hardhack.org.au> wrote:
>
> Dam!, the websitehttp://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardMegais a little

> unclear about pin-outs, isn't it?

I usually use the schematics; you can't have too much trouble that
way!

> I was just going to connect the 18 outputs (+5V TTL Normally High,
> Pulses are Low) from pins 36 through to 53.   9 of these outputs are an
> X coordinates and the other 9 are a Y coordinates.

I'd probably use pins 22-29 for the X, which is port A, and put the
9th wire on pin 49 (port L pin 0). That way, you could write the data
like this:

int x;
PORTL = x >> 8;
PORTA = x;

You could use pins 30-37 (port C) and pin 41 (port G pin 0) for the Y
axis.

[Robert Hart]

Dam so I can't have looking nice and neat :-(


Thanks for the advice nevertheless greatly appreciated. :-)

[Damien P]

On May 22, 8:21 pm, Robert Hart <rob...@hardhack.org.au> wrote:

> Dam so I can't have looking nice and neat :-(

You probably could - your code might not look so neat though!

[Robert Hart]

Actually that's not too bad at all, I can work with that.

Thank you

Robert

On 22/05/2012 8:28 PM, Damien P wrote:

[Robert Hart]