In my recent design and PCB work I often need to design around a variety of wire-to-board connectors. The large assortment of similar brands, sizes, and footprints has caused quite a few difficulties, including:

• Confusion arising from brand names vs. common names (Molex being called JST, etc..)
• Conflating between the very large product lines by connector manufacturers (such as the massive JST catalogue)
• Unable to determine pitch, and only succeeding when trying to mate with various plugs
• Struggling to determine the best connector for my design
• Dealing with counterfeits while trying to find originals

I imagine it may be useful to have a connector sample/demonstration board, with a large array of connectors soldered to it, perhaps mounted in a nice 3D printed frame. One could then visualize each of the various connectors with ease, and attempt to mate to them to test matching. One board could be male and a companion board could be female.

Does anybody else agree that this may be useful?
If so, which connectors would you like to see included on the board?

If people see this as useful, I may design it and make it open-source.

Thanks for any input

 

Does anybody else agree that this may be useful?

Not really. There are too many connector variations to make it practical/useful.

 

Many years ago we had a continuity tester that was plugged into a mainframe. The tester was first connected to a known good system and all points of connection were tested. The test results were then downloaded onto a cassette tape, same as the ones you used to put into a tape player in your car. That record was maintained in a file cabinet. When we had a new mainframe we'd make the appropriate connections, program the tester from the tape and then run it. The biggest problem was testing for short circuits. Since any one wire out of a hundred or so wires could be shorted to something else, more than just knowing A to A was good, B to B was good up to "n" number of wire connections, you had to know if A to B was a connection (bad condition) A to C, A to D, A-E, A-F and on and on. THEN B to C, B-D etc. Then C, Then D and so on and so on. Testing just 10 wires means over 100 checks. And that's just 10 wires. It's not practical for any large scale system, let alone a system that can be used to test dozens if not more different connectors and connections.

Like dl324 said

Not really. There are too many connector variations to make it practical/useful.

It's not practical. And I'd like to add, extremely complex.

 

It's not practical for any large scale system, let alone a system that can be used to test dozens if not more different connectors and connections.

Like dl324 said

It's not practical. And I'd like to add, extremely complex.

Thanks for the reply, but my idea here was not to check electrical connectivity, rather to have a visual catalogue of common connectors and check for mating with on hand cables.

 

I do well with an ANENG cable tester/detector/injector set and a DMM. Injector/detector for long runs, DMM for short runs, and the tester portion for RG connector type cables. I have seen a few scratch-built Dongle type D shells with LEDs to check port connections as well. Kind of a multiport logic probe... Also handy to have is a set of connector pin keys to swap out the connector pins. As far as actual connectivity, a Molex catalog and 6" & metric stainless steel pocket rule or 6" & metric caliper also very useful.

 

You might design a simple board with rows of pins at different pitches. This is usually the first consideration in identifying connector types.